Troubled Thoughts on Meaning Well

My friend "Jan" and I have had many conversations about how we respond to mean people who say nasty things.

I freeze in both mind and mouth. These people always catch me unprepared, and I can never think of anything to say.  I stare at them with wide-open eyes and think shocked and frozen thoughts.

Jan, on the other hand, fires back with sizzling zingers that put them in their place just like THAT.

I have told her, many times, how deeply I envy her.  What vindication and justice and joy that would be, it seems like, looking on, to be able to not only think of just the right response, but to SAY it.  Just like THAT.

She has told me, many times, that she envies me my silence because it saves me soooo much trouble.  Oh my, I have no idea, she says, what it's like to have these words come flying out of your mouth and you can't pull them back in and then you are STUCK with the consequences.  It's horrible.

But that's not really what this post is about.  It's only an intro to say that Jan has always been like this, as evidenced by a little memory she posted the other day:

They say children are cruel but I believe adults are crueler. My first experience was in the bathroom of our newly remodeled church (no more outhouses !!!). The all day meetings were on a hot summer Sunday and I was restless, had my shoes kicked off... Mom whispered in my ear 'go run out on the sidewalk and then wash your face and come back.'. I remember standing in the bathroom fascinated by the locks on the bathroom doors (I was barely 6). This little old lady (who probably was only50!!!) came in bent over and peered at me with her piercing blue eyes 'and who are you?' I'm Jan. 'do you have any brothers or sisters?'. No. 'well you know, only children are spoiled!' having enough of being reminded of my rotten place in the religious sector of large families(4+) I remember saying Yes I am spoiled and I STINK too. She cornered my mom later and let her know what a failure she was not to have had more children. Dad laughed and laughed and laughed when Mom told this on the way home that evening-I remember him saying to Mom ' she has no clue what your life is. ' I always gave that woman a wide berth ...

Well.  That story really troubled me, not because of Jan's sassy comment to the lady, but the fact that someone was that cruel.  A subsequent conversation with Jan confirmed that the woman was someone I knew, one of those industrious, earnest types to whom the world is a pantry and they are the designated keepers of it, to dust off the tin cans and line them up alphabetically, toss the outdated cake mixes, set the mousetraps, and line up the edge of the Saran Wrap just right.

I will call her Hazel.  She was also a minister's wife, which adds more tainted cabbage to the already sick feeling in my stomach. [Locals: it's probably not who you think it is so stop speculating.]

Even if you didn't know Jan's mom, you can easily imagine the heartache and wrenching, repeated pain of being a Mennonite wife and able to birth only one child.

And here this earnest woman berated her for not having more.

Hazel meant well.

We know this, right?  And we say it, or I do, in an attempt to give grace when it's very difficult to do so.  Oh, but, --sigh-- I'm sure she meant well.

She meant well and her tongue pierced to the part of the heart that hurt most.

She meant well, but when do any of us intend to be mean?  When do we ever intend to be unkind?  With all of our concern and our trying to fix our little worlds, we always mean well.  And yet what galling pain we inflict.

While I don't think I've done Hazel's level of damage, God and plenty of others know of the grievous errors I have made, as a minister's wife and in other roles as well, speaking into situations where I felt I should DO something, and mucking it up much worse.

So I want grace for that.  In fact, I desperately need it.

I look at Hazel and others like her and I think, "But they should have known."  But what does that mean for me and what I should have known??

I pray for wisdom in these things, and to keep from creating this sort of carnage.  The best preventative seems to be to avoid that unctuous earnestness, that bustling about one's pantry and setting the tin cans in line because it must be done and if you don't, no one will.
And yet, how many dozens of past acquaintances could testify of my doing just that?

Maybe I should be grateful for the moments when I'm frozen into silence.  At least I'm not destroying anyone then.

Am I responsible for what I should have known?

And: I probably won't know unless someone tells me, so how can I be a safe person to tell? 

I am trying not to obsess about inadvertent harm I might have done, but I just find this a troubling subject all around.


Quote of the Day:
[At Dad's, in December]
Paul: Pure water will NOT conduct electricity.
The BIL who grew up in Mississippi: But what about when Ah'm up on the roooof weldin' and it starts rainin' and all of a sudden Ah'm gettin' juiced??