There should be a mark on my calendar. An over-pronounced, ominous symbol of some sort would do. The mark would remind me forever of when my world and the worlds of everyone everywhere went terribly sideways. That mark is missing.

My mother told us a story of her boy cousins trying to boil frogs in her grandmother’s backyard. No doubt they had heard the hypothesis that if you place a frog in warm water and increase the temperature slowly the frog will allow itself to be boiled alive. I am certain her grandmother’s backyard lacked the equipment to be successful. Mother never said what happened to the poor frogs. I choose to believe they all escaped their diabolical, little boy captors.

The frog boiling hypothesis has been used widely in a metaphoric sense for more than 100 years. For me, “boiling frog syndrome” is why there’s no mark on my calendar. At first, it was a really bad event in China. It then reached both coasts of the United States. There were precautions followed by a pause that led to a shutdown. My tendency is not to be an alarmist. I am a person that just does my own thing. All of the sudden, I feel cooked. I do not understand exactly how I got from where I was to where I am now.

Right now in history, we are all frogs in a pot. It is uncomfortable. There are frogs who believe in God, and frogs that do not. There are right clinging frogs, left clinging frogs, and frogs in the middle. We are, however, all in the same pot.

I had the opportunity to hang out with a frog friend from a different area of the pot. We see things differently. I will hang out with her every chance I get because I love her, but we have not processed our situation the same at all. Our conversation centered around our church environment. The conversation highlighted for me the drastic division caused by the boiling. No one knows which end is up right now.

It seems to me that there are multiple heat sources working on the lot of us. There have already been casualties. I am hot enough. I am hopping out. I refuse to let this particular pot be the end of me. Who is with me?

How do we hop free? I am so glad you asked. I have some thoughts on the matter.

Realize what is boiling you. As I said, I believe there are multiple heat sources contributing to our boil. It will serve you to understand what source of heat is cooking you the quickest. There are so many hot topics. As I talk to people, I realize they are fired up over different things. I would like to suggest that our backgrounds and experiences set our boiling points. For me, how I feel about being controlled is what gets me fired up. My other frog friend gets fired up over issues of respect. We can more easily find our footing when we understand what is driving our response to the heat.

Recognize our differences. We are all unique. That is a good thing. If we aren’t careful, however, under the right heat our differences will drive us apart. An awful lot of that is currently happening in our pot. We hold suspect those who disagree with us. We struggle to recognize the viewpoints of others. Our own issues take precedence and our relationships break down. We inadvertently add a heat source and contribute to the boil when we fail to really see each other.

Respect each other. We don’t get to decide how other people behave. In this life, we are guaranteed to wonder what in the world others are thinking, but it does not serve us to create the narrative for someone else. When our differences are obvious, we have an opportunity to offer respect by allowing space for them to do what feels right. Other people don’t need our judgments or our opinions. By all means, do you, but put down the bullfrog horn that tempts you to shout at everyone who behaves differently from you. Respect given is often respect earned. You do not have to agree with or understand their behavior in order to extend grace.

I keep thinking to myself – this too shall pass. It will. The world will never be the same, but at some point, the crazy will stop. We all need to realize we are in the pot and make a choice. We can ignore the steadily increasing heat, or we can jump out. We can choose to not let the crazy take us. I am being intentionally vague here because I don’t know what is going on in your world. I would bet, though, you know what I am talking about.

In closing, I’ll say this. We are smarter than we have been acting. None of us asked for the circumstances we find ourselves living through. We do have options to make it better. Let’s use the three R’s and hop to freedom.