Me Too

I failed to post for a couple of days...y'all, my head was so full. Not of winter illness, thank goodness, but just of thoughts. Ever have those days? When your head is so full that something NEEDS to come out...to make room for something else...but nothing budges? Welcome to my week.

Been thinking, though, about something I heard Mitch Kruse say on Tuesday when he was here to chat with Lynne:

The authenticity of being able to say ME TOO.

He was talking about the verse in the Sermon on the Mount that talks about planks in eyes. And after I scribbled Mitch's words in my journal, I wrote, What if I stopped judging long enough to say me too?

What if we did? What if we stopped looking at other people with such disdain and dared to admit that we, too, have felt that way? That we, too, have known that pain?

What if?

 

That night after work, I stopped by the grocery store to pick up a couple of things for dinner, and I got in line behind a middle aged woman buying an assortment of food and sporting a sour expression. I never heard anything she said to the cashier, but then again, I was pawing through magazines and drooling over candy bars. {This is why it's true that you shouldn't go to the store hungry...}

As the lady reached for her bags, the cashier, a young lady in her early 20's, I'd say, carried some around and deposited them in her cart. I moved to the register and glanced at the cashier as she came back around the side of the lane. She made a face, which I attributed to a wince of hair falling in her eyes...and she flipped her hair out of the way.

Then she looked at me and said ever so quietly, "Can you pretend like you didn't see that?"

Then I knew. She'd made a face at Little Miss Sweetness that had probably said something rude to her.

I smiled and said, "You know what? I've made that face before, too. On my drive home, actually." Not how I really wanted to be remembered in the mind of a very nice grocery store cashier, but in that moment, I needed to say me too.

As she handed my change to me, she said "You were SO much nicer. Thank you."

What if we said me too? To cashiers who are feeling mistreated. To friends whose relationships are dissolving and they feel inadequate? To kids who messed up big time and feel like life is altered unforgivably now? To parents who sit in a mental sea of regret? To an accountability partner who confesses falling? What if we stopped offering pointed advice for one minute and said...me too?