I had a shallow moment this week and decided to write about that struggle in this blog.  The picture to the left shows “shallow” in the lovely, peaceful, pristine sense, however my shallow moment was more self-absorbed that that.  Have you ever gone through a situation where you know that there is a better way to handle your reactions but there is a part of you that just wants to sulk anyway?  That was me this week.

Here is my confession.  It all started last Saturday, on the way back from visiting my husband’s grandmother.  It was late morning, I knew my hubbie was still out hiking with his hiking buddies and I decided (complete impulse) to stop by a certain store I like and look at the clothing there.

I am the kind of person that would far rather read a book for relaxation than go shopping for clothes; it exhausts me even to think about it.  I do however like to find clothing for an event far enough ahead of time that I’m not desperately searching from store to store at the last minute.  I had a vague idea in this case that perhaps I could find something for my son’s July wedding…lots of Spring inventory out now and thus lots of choices.

Success!  I found a lacy, pale pink top and a white skirt with a lacy edge.  The wedding will be held at a lovely rustic venue with a barn-like reception area and chapel set in a flowering, green area surrounded by trees.  My skirt and top will be dressy enough for the wedding but also casual enough for the partially outdoor grassy venue.

Since I was at this store, I thought I would look around a bit more and perhaps find something still on sale, leftover from winter inventory.  I looked through the racks and lo and behold I found a pair of beige slacks with the exact color tone that I had loved in a pair of my husband’s slacks.  It’s a darker beige tone that just seems to go with everything.

The confession starts about here.  I bought those slacks, very proud of myself for finding something that I knew I would get years of wear out of.  Two days later, I wore them for the first time.  That day, I had worn them for a grand total of maybe 4 hours when I had to drop my car off to get worked on around noon.  My husband had followed me there and as I walked to his car, I somehow managed to turn my ankle on a small pebble.  I went down like the proverbial sack of potatoes onto the greasy, dirty, oily asphalt.

Of course, my husband was worried and ran over to me as he was concerned I was hurt.  The person at the car repair shop came running out as he saw me go down as well.  Me…well I was checking out my pants as I knew I went down hard on my right knee.  Sure enough, there it was, an oily, gritty spot on my brand-new pants, mixed with some blood from my scraped knee.

My ankle was fine fortunately.  I had a rather badly jammed ring finger on my left hand and the scraped up right  knee but I knew but it would all heal quickly.  As my husband drove me back to our house to change my pants and clean up, I began grumbling about the unfairness of life when I ruin my brand-new pants the first day I wore them.  I knew my husband had a low quota of listening to me along that vein so I turned to him and said, “OK, I’m going to grumble one more time, then I will stop.”  I then went on to say, “Seriously, the first day I wore these pants?  Really?”  I then turned to my husband and said, “I’m done now”.  He replied, “Good”.

I knew my best chance of restoring my pants was to get them dry cleaned so I did.  The first time, it got about 50% better so I asked them to try really hard to get the rest out as they were unwearable that way.  The second time I picked up the pants, the cleaners got the entire rest of the spot out.  Yea!  But along with the spot, they took out some of the beige color so now I had a white-ish spot on the knee.  Still ruined!  I didn’t want to blame the cleaners because they did exactly what I asked them to do; they tried hard to get the spot out.  I just said thank you for trying then left with the pants.

I wasn’t far from the store so I decided I needed to make a decision one way or the other.  I either needed to emotionally walk away from these pants I clearly was not going to be able to wear for work again or I could go see if there were any more pants in my size and emotionally accept that I would have to buy them again.  I decided to go to the store and sure enough, I found some more.  Instead of going to the front of the store to purchase them, I decided to go to customer service.  I explained what happened then asked, “Can you give me any sort of I-feel-sorry-for-you-that-you-ruined-your-pants-the-first-day discount?”  The lady behind the desk answered that she could not give a discount for that however she could exchange the pants I had with the exact same pants.  I was shocked and said, “But it was my fault”.  She very graciously said they could still change them out and I was grateful.

So…this is my confession.  I knew while I was mentally struggling with paying for the pants again or giving them up that there was far more pain in the world than my ruined pants.  I was grumbling about a spot on the knee of my pants when there have been so many soldiers who have lost whole limbs in Iraq or Afghanistan.  I thought also of people in other parts of the world who have lost their lives during civil strife, or lost homes and livelihoods in the hurricanes this past year.  Who am I to take my first-world disappointments and in any way compare them to others who have lost everything?  They are precious in God’s sight and I am ashamed that I reacted as I did.

I think what I have learned from this week is that I am grateful for the small kindness of the store; they did not have to help me but they did.  I absolutely know though that had the situation resolved differently, I needed to keep the perspective of what was really important in life. The pants were not at all important in the whole continuum of my life, in fact not even a speck on the years that my life will span.

Tomorrow is Easter and we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus.  I am so grateful to Jesus for His death on the cross to cover my multitude of sins, from big sins of bitterness, lack of trust, and unforgiveness…to little sins (but none-the-less wrong) of grumbling over ruined pants that have no heavenly value.

Blessings this Easter to all of you who read this.