Humbling humbling humbling …

I’m working through the DVD’s and study guide (again) and OH MAN! I am totally cracking up at two incredibly humbling things:

1. One of my eagle-eye proofers made the gentle observation that I tend to “overuse” quotation marks to set apart “colloquial” phrases. I thought, “Hmmmmm? I do?” So I did a little “search” in “Word” and “YUP!” There were, oh, say, “A FEW HUNDRED” sets of “completely unnecessary” and quite “distracting” quotation marks around various “words.”

Hah. I never would’ve known that about my writing. I never would’ve seen it. Thank God for the Body of Christ! In the counsel of many, there really is great wisdom.

2. For say, I don’t know, maybe THOUSANDS of handouts that I’ve distributed at various women’s retreats and conferences over the last few years, I’m pretty much 100% sure that I’ve had a typo in my 1 Corinthians 10:14 cite that turns “Therefore, my dear friends, FLEE from idolatry” into a sentence with an ITTY-BITTY tiny little BUG in it.

(Yes, yes. If you’ve kept your handouts from my event, go ahead and look it up and LAUGH WITH ME as I have apparently encouraged thousands of women to, “FLEA from idolatry.”)

Oh oh oh! I am so laughing at my inadequacies. Truly. These two examples are making me think of the time in eighth grade when I was reading out loud in a science class and accidentally blurred the two words “air” and “masses” together. Not a good moment.

Or the time in high school when I had my Walkman (yeah, 80’s!) on too loud on a dark, SILENT, school bus coming home from a speech team competition … I turned to my friend and, you know, YELLED because the decibels ringing in my ears were actually quite loud and I didn’t realize that everyone else was pretty much asleep.

Makes me think of the ABSOLUTE WORLD’S WORST LAW FIRM INTERVIEW EVER. Absolutely. Hands-down. “No competition.” 🙂 In my third year of law school, I gave what can only be described as the WORST job interview EVER. If ever a person was GUARANTEED to NOT get a job, that was me. I still blush a tiny bit when I think about it and it’s been over ten years now.

And the time back in Chicago when I spilled a HUGE glass of juice all over my boss’s papers and $200 tie at a breakfast meeting and, after it was all cleaned up, SPILLED A SECOND GLASS TOO. (Ugh. That one still makes me clench my chest a bit.)

I could go on and on (and on and on).

But I’ll stop and simply thank God that His grace covers over not only my sin, but my stupidity too.

Sleep well, dear friends!
The Lord is with you.

Yours smilingly,
Tara B.