I've always been pretty good at spelling. As a child I boasted that Spelling was my favorite subject. I have an uncanny ability to spot spelling mistakes.  I'm pretty sure that if Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Sonnet 43 had a single misspelling, that's what I'd absorb rather than the beauty of the poetry. Sad, I know.

Anytime I spend days with my sisters, like I've had the chance to the past two weeks, I find out things about myself. We're sometimes shockingly honest with each other. My little sister told me this past week that she had always hated asking me to read over her school papers. She's insisted, more than once, that she would ask me to look merely at the semantics of her paper but that I'd jump on a misspelling like a hungry flea on a dog in July. She's right.

My other sister called me Ms. Corrector for years due to my willingness to freely point out things like a misspoken word (such as aurora instead of aura). In case you're wondering, I didn't make up the aura example.  Someone in the car on our Girls' Day last week actually said aurora instead of aura.  I kept quiet about it for a good hour before I couldn't take it any longer.  And when I told the misspeaking sister about her mistake I unintentionally, but self-righteously (no doubt) spewed laughter. Thank goodness she loves me.  And that I'm not disinvited from future Girls' Days.

Really, I do my best to refrain from correcting.

Even so, when someone makes a written or verbal mistake, a smirk outside my control curls on my lips. I fret thinking there are others of you out there who have been smote by my correction.

I found myself singly entertained by a sign taped on a bathroom stall during Girls' Day. I snapped the picture, surely freaking out any people on the other side of the stalls with the blink of my flash.

Just days before, I'd gotten a look from the waitress at a Mexican food restaurant when I tried to snap a picture of a humorous mistake on the menu.

Looking back, I subscribed to Highlights magazine as a kid. Maybe I looked at one too many of those "What's wrong with this picture".  You know, the one where a duck is wearing galoshes? I single-handedly tore up that page monthly, circling errors with my trusty ink pen.

Jason has forbidden me to read one of his posts before it's published and the kids despise my helping them with their homework lest I let loose a giggle at their mistake.

I will continue to laugh rendering myself "temporarily out of order". Hopefully my laughter will not be at the expense of others.

Because you could say I have a problem. With the help of my "call it like it is" sisters and the imagined disapproval of the waitress and lady behind said bathroom stall,

I am convicted of my correcting audacity. 

My apologies.

But it's been made known the error of my own way and I'm glad to say I'm making a fresh start.

I want to see people and situations through grace lenses; not through my error-seeking eyes.  I want to spot bright and beautiful on a landscape of dull.

I'm set on focusing more clearly on what's right, despite my history of pointing out the wrong.

Philippians chapter four draws me in time and time again directing my thoughts.

Finally, brothers and sisters, .........whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things Philippians 4:8

To be able to see beauty where imperfection exists; this is the gift of grace.

 

A note: I am trying to write about grace in the upcoming weeks. I'm hoping to be able to publish an ebook with a collection of my reflections on this great gift from God.  I wanted to wait until I knew exactly what I would say before I started writing, but I realize that I must begin the journey of writing in simple humility and wonder. I trust that a desire to be taught by God's Word (paired with discipline) and the experiences I am granted will guide my pen. Say a bunch of prayers for the discipline part for me, would you?