"I use to wonder about Moms whose son wore the same thing every Sunday and now I'm one of those moms." - The words of a friend of mine.
Last week, I received a notification that I had been tagged in a friend's post. I used to live in the same town as her and attended her husband's church for 2 years several years ago. The quote above had been posted to my page with a happy face at the end of the line. When I first saw it, I immediately recognized the humor of the situation. After all, I have been guilty of silently judging someone when I had no personal experience to base my judgement on. God has certainly had a funny way of recreating those same circumstances in my life, to teach me some humility. My first response was to reply with a laughing emoji and a heart. But then I wondered what exactly it was that my friend had wondered about me back then. I realized that the word "wonder" actually meant "judge". Ever since that morning I have been having flashbacks of times that I've been wondered at, and am finding them quite funny. I thought I'd share some of these funny stories in a multi-part series in case anyone else needs a good laugh at the things people make judgements about.
Interestingly several of these stories revolve around dressing my family. Sadly, a lot of them have happened at church. What's every-bodies' hang up with dressing for church, anyway?
One of the first memories I have of someone trying to make me feel inadequate as a wife was in a church we attended from 2000-2004. During that time our family had grown from 4-7 and lets just say getting 5 kids with 3 of them under the age of 4 ready for church was no easy feat. But we made it every week, with all the kids shoes on, hair combed, manners in check and ready to not only attend but serve. During a little social time between early service and Sunday school, I was with a group of young moms chatting about the things mom's chat about when a well-liked widow in the church approached us with a smile. She joined in on some of the small talk and then said to all of us while looking across the lobby at our group of husbands, "You can always tell who is doing their duty by their husbands by how wrinkled their husband's shirt is on Sunday morning." She then smiled and walked away to go talk to the other elderly women, while we all turned to check out whose husband was wrinkled. It was mine. So here's the funny part of the story...I actually took it to heart. I made it through church and lunch and got all the little ones settled into naptime while the older 2 played outside and then I went to my husband in tears to apologize for failing him and for him having to go to church in a wrinkled shirt. And he just looked at me like I had two heads and asked me what I was talking about. He let me know that he didn't think I was a failure as a wife and that he was perfectly capable of ironing his own clothes if he thought it necessary. Then we laughed at how ridiculous it was to judge a wife's success by her husband's shirt and it was over. It kind of became a running joke among the other young moms at that church too, whenever we needed to lighten the mood, someone would say, "yeah well, at least your husband's shirt got ironed." It wasn't to long afterwards that we found Downy Wrinkle Releasing spray. I'd like to say that now that my husband no longer had wrinkled shirts due to that magic potion, all judgment against me stopped. But since I will not tell a lie, I will instead tell another story in Part 2 of this series. Stay tuned.
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