Foot in Mouth Disease

We all do it; and half the time we're absurdly unaware that we're walking around with a shoe hanging out of our mouths like a dog's tongue on car ride.  I laugh when well renowned authors always have their characters' words so perfectly chosen and placed, as if it were at all true to life.

My mother once chided me (with reason, lest she be judged too harshly), "Sometimes Liz, I don't know how you have any friends."  (This too may have been a peppermint shoe moment on her part; ironically she doesn't recall the conversation.)  I revere her, though, for the courage to correct me and that she loved me enough to help me grown and improve. 

We each say things that, once said, we wish the next moment we could choke back.  More often than not my days are filled with things like, "You did a better job..." better than what? or "You're funny, but I read your blog because your friends are REALLY funny."  It is a wonder, and truly miraculously that I have friends when rather than console a friend who apologized for being unable to attend a meeting, I crack a joke about him not being able to schedule these kind of things.  eeeewwwww, tacky!

My heart burns and I'd love to purge that moment, and those words from existence.    We see the wisdom of sages and God when in a vision reaches the throne of God and realizes his most monumental of sins, a man of God, in Isaiah 6: 5-7,  "Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.  Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar:  And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged."

Mercy exists, I can be clean.  And despite myself, I am blessed with many forgiving friends and family.  I am in awe at my eldest son, who because he is slow to place his words, is blessed with more kindness and love than most.  May your days be filled with kind words, or peppermint shoes.