You’ll Never Guess What I Did

I’m really, incredibly, undeniably embarrassed that I did this, but I did. But, I’ll take it in stride, I’ll use it as a teachable moment…and it ends up as a blog topic. God loves blogs.

Kelly and I got our normal assortment of junk mail last week. One in particular we happened to thumb through together one afternoon. It was a department store catalog for an annual sale or something. Here’s where I get really embarrassed. We get to one page in particular and I see a model sitting down with a relatively awkward pose. Then I look down at the bottom of the page, she’s sitting down again in another awkward pose.

So, I make this comment, “Why would they use that lady?” And then I believe I topped it off with one of these, “She looks really stiff. I’m not sure why they think that’s a good picture.”

Turns out, no more than 10 seconds later, Kelly looks at me at delivers the line that hit me like a punch in the throat. Talk about feeling shame, Kelly turned to me and said, “She’s in a wheelchair!”

Just to clarify, I was making fun of a lady in a wheelchair! Obviously, I’m not against the physically challenged, but I will say, it was a very low low for me. It was accidental, I’m not going to go into therapy for it or anything, but I did do it nonetheless.

Here’s the teachable moment for me…

This is exactly what we do all the time, all of us. We see half the picture and we make up our minds. We don’t let the situation play itself out the way it should before deciding how we’re going to respond. For example, when was the last time we were talking to a friend and half way through a sentence we decided where it was going and passed judgment. Or, the last time we heard one side of a story, jumped onboard, only to realize there are 2 sides to every story.

Unfortunately, I know it happens to me more than I wish it did, but that’s the truth. We’re quick to pull the trigger and slow to back up and swallow our pride when we should have been a little more patient.

Sorry to the millions and millions of people from 46 different countries that read this blog multiple times everyday that I had to let down. I’m not perfect. I’m working on it, but I’m not quite there yet. Thanks for your patience.