Perception or Reality?

We often make things harder than they have to be.  Alot of miscommunication comes from not the actual communication, but the perception of it.  Case in point, I love my church and the people there, but I have not always felt that way.  Why not?  My perception of the way some people said things was based on past experiences of people I dealt with who had nothing to do with them.  Because I already had an image that a person who looked this way was condescending, I turned on my internal mute button when they spoke.  The same was for my image of people that dressed a certain way; I already had cotton stuffed in my ears before they spoke so I never actually Heard them because I wasn't listening.  I know alot of that comes from my experiences growing up, life in general and the way I was  prior to being saved.  The one thing I had to learn is that while I am a product of my environment, I don't have to be a casualty of it.  I have practiced listening and truly trying to understand different perspectives.  In addition, I am trying to be more aware of how I say and do things so that someone else's perception is not a reality.

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