What I Meant to Say Was . . .

It happened in the checkout line at a dollar store. My wife and I were going through the line and just as we were gathering the bags to leave, the teen-aged clerk looked at my wife and asked, “When are you due?” My wife’s jaw dropped and she stammered out something and weakly finished with, “I’m not pregnant.” The irony of the question stemmed from the fact that not only was my wife not pregnant, she was also svelte and a well trained athlete, at the time teaching kickboxing exercise.

The bagger at the checkout line turned, perplexed, to the clerk and almost shouted, “What’s the matter with you, girl? What made you think she was pregnant?” As my wife’s face gradually grew crimson with embarrassment, the clerk nonchalantly said, “Her shirt wasn’t tucked in.” Not willing to concede the moment, and becoming more and more defensive of my wife, the bagger simply said, “Only in our neighborhood does an un-tucked shirt mean someone’s gonna have a baby.”

The clerk muttered a half-hearted, unrepentant, “I’m sorry,” and we left with me having to field the stream of questions about whether my wife really did look fat.

The clerk missed her chance to learn. The moment of potential embarrassment had also been a moment for her to begin to see beyond her own neighborhood. But, it came and went and she let it go. But, all of us have our “neighborhood” don’t we? We blurt out things regularly that betray our narrowness, our assumptions, our limited view of things, and our prejudices.

If I had a nickel for every time I put my foot in my mouth, even with good intentions, I would be a wealthy man. But I suppose that I am wealthy in some other ways because of them. Those moments highlighted my own narrowness, ignorance, prejudice, intolerance, pride, insecurities and the limitations of my own “neighborhood.” They are part of the highlight reel of moments I wish I could do over. But they all presented me with a chance to either entrench myself and proclaim that I was right or that I didn’t do anything wrong, or accept the grace of God and admit error, apologize, feel foolish for a while, and hopefully learn. It is my hope that in sharing these moments they will lead you to reflect on your own moments of embarrassment and learning.

In our average day, the question isn’t whether we’ll suffer from “foot in mouth” disease. It is when and how often. The smart people are the ones who appropriate those moments and learn something from them. The really smart people are the ones who pay attention to other people’s loose tongues, verbal gaffs, and off-the-mark comments. Those moments are filled with two important opportunities: 1) The desire to never repeat the same mistake you just witnessed, and 2) the discovery of truth that is often illuminated by the strange moment. Like the clerk, we often have a chance to look at what our “neighborhood” has taught us that might not be universal or even helpful. Since we all grow up in a “neighborhood” that is filled with assumptions, values, threats, hopes and dreams, our experience by nature is narrow and limited.

Our neighborhoods have often told us…

• Who the people are that we can trust

• Who the acceptable people are

• All the shoulds, oughts, nevers, can’ts, and always of life

• What our limitations probably are

• What we should feel guilty about

• Whether we should ever feel guilty

• What it means to be an adult

• Whether or not we really have to grow up

• What we will probably get rewarded for

• Whether life is worth living or not

This book hopefully gives us the chance to be really smart people. Over the course of the chapters that follow, I will share with you some reflections on moments of Jesus’ encounters with people who eventually have to take their feet out of their mouths along with some embarrassing moments of my own. For the most part, they are well- intentioned people, folks who are often trying to make a good impression. They mean well and sometimes are trying to rescue a deteriorating situation with a comment, only to make it worse. In some cases they don’t mean well at all and the things they blurt out are intended to trap, embarrass, judge, and put down. But in almost every case, they are everyday people who, in most cases, probably wished they could take back what they said. These red-faced individuals are great teachers though. In their bumbling way, they have provided Jesus with a forum to instruct. By allowing their ill-timed comments to have a spotlight turned on them, they give us a chance to discover important things. They may not come across well in the story of scripture, but we can thank them for their gift anyway. Join me as we walk into their awkward moments.