While I was at the laundromat this afternoon, I was minding my own business, as was almost everyone else in the place, when this woman comes in to do her laundry. However, she is talking - loudly - on her cell phone while coming into the establishment, and it's obvious from her end of things that this should be a very private conversation, not one to be conducted, at high volume, out in public. She was completely oblivious to the fact that she was airing her dirty laundry out for the whole world to see. Yes, I know, it was a laundromat, where else to air out dirty laundry? But the laundry there should be physical, not verbal and private! And the language she was using around very young children in the place! She was extremely disrespectful to everyone in the building.
I definitely breathed a sigh of relief when she left. I mean, I can understand that not everyone is happy with their lots in life, but come on, have some class and leave those conversations, and that language, behind closed doors, not out in public like that! And certainly not around 2-5 year olds running around the laundromat! I could see her sitting out in her car now and then while I was folding my clothes, but I had a lot of clothes to fold, and she was back inside before I had finished. About 20 minutes had passed, and she was still having the very private and very foul-mouthed conversation. While I was finishing up my folding, I wondered why God created such obviously-low-classed people in the first place? Then, it slowly dawned on me.
Just as God creates individuals to test our ability to love and to have compassion, He also creates individuals to show us where we would be, or might be, without His presence in our lives. And sure enough, as soon as that thought struck me, I realized back in my darker days, before I allowed God to embrace me and make me His once more, that I was very much like this woman. I would use foul language, without worrying who was around me, I would have what should be private conversations out in public (I can even remember a few with my vile and sharp tongue in the USM library on the library's desk phone). However, shame did not consume me, for I realized I had moved on from all of that, and going along with last week's church sermon by Jeff Clark, I had forgotten and buried that past where it belonged. And I thanked Jesus for having taken me away from all that I was and making me into a better man today.
Watch Jeff Clark's January 1 sermon here on forgetting the past:
http://vimeo.com/34527652
Should I have invited that woman to church instead of just rolling my eyes at her crude and vulgar language and leaving without a backward glance? Should I have confronted her about using such language in a public place around small children? I don't know. I do know that if anyone had tried that with me back in the day, either their words would have fallen on deaf ears, or I would have turned on them like a cornered tiger for the audacity they would have had for sticking their nose into my business.
So I don't know what I should have done, but I did what I did (left), and there's no point in wondering what I could have done differently. As my friend Curt would say, there is nothing I could have done differently, because the action that I chose was the only action I could have chosen. I thank God for putting her there into my day as a reminder of what I once was like, and how I have come so far from being that crude, crass, and low-brow through His Grace and love. And while I still have miles to go, I've come too far to allow myself ever to backslide and stumble back into what I once was.
Amen!
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