Social Graces

By Emily Parke Chase –

While talking with a friend at work, I thanked her for helping me with a project. She was delighted and hurriedly gushed, “Oh, it was no pleasure at all!”

Though I wandered away shaking my head, I decided to extend her grace. After all, “It was no trouble at all” and “It was a pleasure” are not so far apart.  Then my friend’s husband, also a co-worker, apologized for forgetting the name of a client. “You know how it is, in one ear and gone tomorrow.”

Perhaps we all need an occasional reminder to ponder our words before they flow off our tongues. We think at high speed and release a thought before it is fully processed. Our brains switch off and head out to Starbucks without warning.

This issue of mangling phrases is not a modern disease caused by watching too much MTV or texting messages on i-Pods. Anyone can slip up typing 140 characters with his thumbs. But forty years ago, long before e-mail and emoticons, my grandmother encountered a friend in the market one morning and passed along a compliment overheard the day before. Like my co-worker, my grandmother’s friend blushed and, in her excitement, replied, “Oh, thank you so much! And, Mrs. Parke, if I ever hear anything nice about you, I’ll be sure to say so.”

Can it be true that over the course of decades my grandmother’s friends had never said a kind word about her?

The problem of prattling pitfalls only gets worse when we make such errors not before an audience of one but in front of a large group. Consider, for example, the Sunday morning when one of our former pastors looked out over his congregation and noted a large number of empty seats in the worship service. He apologized to us for the meager attendance. “The crowd seems much thinner today. All our ladies are on a weekend retreat.”

Fortunately for him, his wife was among those attending the retreat. Or was it the other way around? Would she have preferred to be seated among those of us whom he considered more slender? Thankfully, if she ever heard about his comment, she too extended him grace. They are still happily married.

Maybe we should all strive to be a bit more like Moses and develop slowness of speech.

“My dear brothers and sisters, be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to get angry.” (James 1:19 NLT)

(Emily Parke Chase is busy editing out mangled phrases on her webpage. Visit her at emilychase.com.)

A Tale of Two Faces

By Rhonda Rhea –

I was looking through family pictures the other day. I love oohing and ahing over the pictures of all my kids when they were babies. I did, however, make an interesting observation in several of the shots that included the entire family. When the kids were babies, my husband had a mustache.

And I didn’t.

Woah, not a pretty turn of events, I must say. I wonder if we could make a bad reality show out of it. Something like “Where’s Their Hair Now”? Or even better, how about “Trading Faces”?

If not a reality show, at least a poem. I’ve noticed that traumatic experiences often send writers into bouts of poetry. For some of us, it’s really bad poetry. My proof:

Electrolysis or lasers?
Should I go ahead and tweeze it?
Sugars, waxes, creams or razors?
Should I heat it, blast it, freeze it?

Maybe chemicals will get it,
Gotta look at all the facts.
I can simply wax poetic,
But maybe I should simply wax.

I decided it was time to end the bad poem when I realized there were too many words that rhyme with “pelt” and not enough that rhyme with “weed-whacker.”

All “Extreme Makeover, Face Editions” aside, it’s not a bad thing to stop and think about our spiritual faces. Have you ever met a two-faced person? Have you ever been one? Behaving one way at church, showing a totally different face at home, on the job or at school?

We need to always put our best face forward, as it were. Hypocrisy is one of the Lord’s pet peeves. We’re told in 1 Peter 2:1 to stop all that nonsense. “Therefore, rid yourselves of all malice and all deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander of every kind” (NIV). The New Living phrases it like this, “So get rid of all malicious behavior and deceit. Don’t just pretend to be good! Be done with hypocrisy and jealousy and backstabbing.” Anytime we find ourselves acting as pretenders or two-faced back-stabbers we need a makeover in the most extreme way. And on all our collective faces.

Jesus said in Mark 7:6, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:  ‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me’” (NIV).

It doesn’t even really matter who has the furriest upper lip. Whatever my lip condition, I never want it to be out of sync with my heart. I’ve given my heart to Christ. That means my lips and my mind, my motives and my actions, are all to be His too. And when we have secret places of hypocrisy in our lives, they interfere with our worship. After all, there are no secret places that are hidden from Him. He sees our hearts. Isaiah 66:3 says, “The acts of the hypocrite’s worship are as abominable to God as if they were offered to idols” (AMP).

Enough duplicity. We need to get rid of every two-faced tendency. I want to look forward to meeting Jesus face to face with great eagerness and expectation. Face to face. Not face to face to face.

Rhonda Rhea is a radio personality, conference speaker, humor columnist and author of seven books, including High Heels in High Places and her newest book, Whatsoever Things Are Lovely: Must-Have Accessories for God’s Perfect Peace. You can find out more at www.RhondaRhea.org.

The Dog Ate It

By Rhonda Rhea –

Anytime it takes me an entire half hour to write out my to-do list for the day, I know it’s a day I’m likely in for some hullabaloo. That’s what hullaba-happened yesterday. I’m not the most organized cookie on the block. The to-do list helps keep me from wasting my day flitting here and there without accomplishing the things that are most vital. So I built my list and numbered each item in order of importance. Okay, since organization is not my best thing, the list was on a napkin. But at least I made it. In a few hours I had a couple of items checked off with about a dozen more to go. Still overwhelming but I was making progress.

I figured I could make faster progress if I had coffee, so I went to whip up a pot. Here’s my to-do list tip for the day:  If you’re going to put your to-do list on a napkin, at least make sure you put something on top of it so it doesn’t float off the desk. By the time I got back with my coffee, the dog had run away with it. She was under the table in the dining room. Shredding.

The next part of the hullabaloo involved an intense chase scene. I fished most of the list out from under the table and a few pieces out from between LuLu’s molars. A half hour spent on a list that was suddenly coleslaw.

LuLu was trying to look innocent. Maybe she was even trying to help me. No to-do list means nothing to do, right? Isn’t a good shredding even better than a few checkmarks? Still, the list of all the work I was trying to accomplish at home was dog chow. The dog really did eat my homework.

It was a good reminder, though, that there are times when all those things on the to-do list need to give way to things that are most vital. It’s always a good test for me when I have deadlines up to my eyebrows and I get a call from a friend who needs a listening ear. Or even when my kids want to play a game. Am I willing to shred my own agenda when the Lord might have a different one in mind? If there’s something that will bring Him glory that’s not on my to-do list, am I willing to trade my list for His?

Colossians 3:2 says to, “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things” (NIV). Then a few verses later, we’re given this reminder:  “And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus.”

Whether in word or deed, whether on a napkin or over the phone—or even playing tiddlywinks—I want my agenda to ever and always line up with His.

Of course, we’ll have trouble playing tiddlywinks. LuLu ate them. I think she thought they were baked beans. Which I’m guessing she thought would go well with the coleslaw.

Rhonda Rhea is a radio personality, conference speaker, humor columnist and author of seven books, including High Heels in High Places and her newest book, Whatsoever Things Are Lovely: Must-Have Accessories for God’s Perfect Peace. You can find out more at www.RhondaRhea.org.

Stop the Clock

By Jodi Whisenhunt –

I was watching a football game with my husband the other day, and one team scored a field goal to up the lead. They went ahead just enough that the opponent would need to score more than one touchdown to win. Few minutes remained on the clock, so implying imminent victory, the announcer said, “Nine is a really big number!”

I scratched my head and thought, “Really?” Now, I’m no mathematician, but nine is pretty low on my scale. I mean, it’s not even double digit! I started wondering what other wisdom I might glean from the sport, and I discovered something that could be quite handy: the ability to stop time.

Now, NFL officials don’t actually prevent seconds from ticking away, but they do halt progress of the game periodically. Someone blows a whistle and the teams retreat to the sidelines to rethink their strategies.

I want to stop time.

Imagine how handy that would be. If I’m about to spill spaghetti sauce on my new white shirt, tweet—time out! If my daughter’s about to snatch her little brother’s favorite toy, tweet—time out! If I’m about to miss an important deadline, tweet—time out! Mistakes would be a thing of the past. I’d stop the clock and rethink my strategy as I went along. Writer’s block simply would not exist. I’d just hit pause until play resumed in my head. If only I could stop time!

If everyone had the ability to control time, however, the world would be one big mess. So it’s good that only God can control the clock. Only He can call a time out. Only He holds the whistle. After all, “Whoever obeys his command will come to no harm, and the wise heart will know the proper time and procedure” (Ecclesiastes 8:5). No need to retreat to the sidelines and rethink strategy. The Head Coach knows the game plan.

Jodi Whisenhunt is a 2009 Amy Writing Award-winning freelance writer and editor in McKinney, Texas. You can find her at www.jodiwhisenhunt.com or www.magicalmouseschoolhouse.com, where Disney IS school.

Let Me Do It!

By Emily Parke Chase –

“Let me do it! Let me! You always get to say what you want on the paper, but it’s my turn!”

Can this really be happening? This ordinary, subservient pen is rebelling? My ballpoint, a recent acquisition from a bank teller’s counter, is demanding a say in my writing?

“Let me control the flow of ink for once. Your fingers grip me so tightly, pushing me this way and that. Did it ever, even once, occur to you that I might not want to go from left to right? Or that I might not like being squeezed by my own personal python? Have you ever considered that I might have a thought or two of my own to offer your readers?”

I look over my shoulder and hope no one walks into my study, because I’m about to have a conversation with my…pen?

“So why not let me have a turn? After all, see those little initials there on my clip?”

You mean, B.I.C.?

“That’s right.  Haven’t you ever wondered what they stand for?”

Um, give me a chance. Business, Industry, Corporation? Bossiness, Idiocy and Craziness? I’ll bite, what do they mean?

“Bite? Ouch, that’s another gripe I have. When you need to think, you chomp down and chew on a defenseless piece of plastic. How would you like to take a bath in saliva while sharp molars dig into your ribs?”

Get to the point. What do the letters B.I.C. stand for?

“Very cute. ‘Get to the point.’ They call it a nib, for your information. As for those letters, try this on for size: Bursting In Creativity.”

Ridiculous! You made that up.

“And that statement, my friend, proves my thesis. I’m bursting with creativity, ready to share my thoughts with a waiting world. You, on the other hand, you have been doodling, aimlessly pouring out my life’s blood all over this page. You are stewing over what to write for this column, while here at hand – in your hand, for that matter – is the answer to your need.”

So let’s imagine I allowed you, my ballpoint, to take control. Just one time. What profound thoughts would you want to communicate with my readers?

“Depression is a big issue these days. Writing in blue ink day after day has taught me a lifetime of lessons on dealing with the blues.”

Try again.

“What about the transitory nature of life? Philosophers go on and on pondering that topic. Think about the advantages of indelible ink. And I have no eraser.”

Anything else to offer?

“Consider the power of the written word. Take all that power, concentrate it in a single ink cartridge, and imagine its impact on world peace.”

Give up, I sigh. My fingers grasp my pen anew and push it across my writing pad. Wait! Is that a faint snort of exasperation I hear? A large glob of ink smears across the page.

”You are a letter from Christ . . . written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God”  (2 Corinthians 3:3, NIV).

(The author of this article is busy searching for a new pen, but feel free to visit her at emilychase.com.)

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