Thinking Before Speaking...a Good Idea!

Some days are challenging and some days are amazing but there are some days that I can’t help but wonder what happened? Let me explain, so there I was minding my own business, waiting on customers (as I am apt to do while at work), when a comment took me totally off guard. I mean I’ve heard about things like this happening but never dreamed it would happen to me. Oh to be in my twenties again when something like this was not a remote possibility…doggone thirties!

Anyways, so like I was saying, I was waiting on this couple and the lady begins whispering to her husband and nodding toward me and he’s saying “nah,” and she’s saying “yes I think so” and he’s like “no way” and she says “I’m going to ask” and he says, “no, don’t” and he looks nervous and through all this I’m just trying to work on their transactions and thinking “Hey, I can hear you!” I mean do they not understand the point of whispering after all?

So finally I look up when I hear the woman mutter something that I was certain I had misunderstood and I ask quite politely, “I’m sorry, what was that?” She proceeds to repeat the question “Are you pregnant?” (Flashback to Christmas episode of Family Matters where Steve presumed to say a woman on the train was with child…and she wasn’t.)

I thought, “You should have listened to your husband, because you are about to DIE.”

Tell me how does one respond non-violently to such a question? Let’s not even address the fact that our society thinks it is perfectly acceptable and normal for a young woman (and that I am,) to be PREGNANT without a HUSBAND!!! Obviously there are bigger fish to fry here but back to the story…

By sheer will power I refrained from reaching out and touching her…and simply said “No, I’m not.” To myself I thought “Stinking M&Ms, why must I love you so?” Sometimes the fewer the words, the better the result, because the woman who asked now began to stutter as she tried to get an apology out and the poor husband was grounded to the floor and his eyes were as big as saucers. Yeah, he wasn’t saying anything. Lol!

I can honestly say that was a first for me. When they were gone and my co-worker assured me that it was not true, and we had a good laugh about the audacity of people in this day and age, I did the only thing a woman could do in this situation…I headed for the M&Ms.

Hey, a girl’s gotta de-stress somehow! Right? :)

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

Now unto the second book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. 4 children (sons of Adam and daughters of Eve) find themselves stumbling into the incredible world of Narnia where the White Witch has reigned for a hundred years shrouding the land in ice and cold. By playing on the weakness of one of the boys, Edmund, she accuses him of being a traitor and she dares Aslan to stop her.

“Tell you what is written on the very Table of Stone which stands beside us? Tell you what is written in letters deep as a spear is long on the fire-stones on the Secret Hill? Tell you what is engraved on the scepter of the Emperor-beyond-the-Sea? You at least know the Magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to kill.”

When Aslan drew her aside and offered himself as a sacrifice in the place of the young boy Edmund, she thought she had won and celebrated the victory. She killed him on the Stone Table. But death could not hold him and after a time with a loud thunderous crack the stone table cracked in two and Aslan was resurrected. He spoke to the 2 girls and what he said was so significant;

“…that though the Witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, into the stillness and the darkness before Time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who had committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the Table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards.”

What a promise! The Word of God tells us that all, every single one of us has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We were all traitors destined for death. But even in the beginning of time God had a plan to rescue us. So Jesus did what none of us could do for ourselves. Sinless, blameless and a willing victim, he conquered death so that we could have access to eternal life. Spectacular!!

There were so many other great points in this story but that was the highlight for me. I mean it doesn’t get much better than that. That is the good news! :)