proverbs 13:18
He who ignores discipline comes to poverty and shame,
but whoever heeds correction is honored.
i am NOT good at taking correction well. i am VERY good at justifying my sin... way too good at that... i can muse for days on one little bit of correction that i do not want to do and i can think of thousands of ways to “kind of” do it or why it really isn’t important for ME to do that...
if “not taking correction well” was an olympic event, i would qualify. and i would win and they would play the national anthem for the country of my origin, SHAMEVILLE, when i stood on the podium to collect my gold medal. and i would get a lucrative contract to make commercials by hawking the fact that i was SO excellent at NOT taking correction well. but i would get caught doing something bad (because i did not take correction well) and i would lose those lucrative contracts and wind up poorer than i was in the beginning.
in reading today’s chapter there were SO many verses that i wanted to choose. way too many. proverbs 13 is just chock full o’ good advice...
i almost chose verse 20:
He who walks with the wise grows wise,
but a companion of fools suffers harm.
and i was going to announce that i wouldn’t be hanging out with fools anymore and thus i was going to be SOOOOOO lonely the rest of this month. but then i really couldn’t have kept hanging out with myself and that was going to be very very hard to do. unless i became schizophrenic... and so did i. (hee hee, did you get the little schizophrenic joke?)
so kept coming back to verse 18 because i think i need a fresh thinking on how i see correction. so that when i am corrected through Scripture or a wise mentor that i will see it not as something to argue or justify why i do or don’t do that... but as something that might help me avoid poverty and shame...
and then it hit me... which wasn’t nice of it, because we shouldn’t hit...
i had actually lived through the metaphor that i needed. and i could still conjure up lots of emotion about it and remember how it felt to really NEED and CRAVE correction and not be aware of it and be so THANKFUL for it when it arrived...
about a year ago (before dave ramsey came into our lives and we heeded correction and decided not to eat our sunday lunch anymore, but i still miss those lunches so much) we were eating sunday lunch at a wonderful restaurant here in town... a very crowded restaurant. and we were eating with a group of college students and some friends of our who also teach in the college ministry.
lots of people. get the picture....
lots of people with cameras on their cell phones... so you might have really gotten a picture if this had not ended the way it did.
and i went to the restroom in this local eating establishment. which by the mercy given undeserved to fools like i, was RIGHT by the table where we were eating. so that when i came out of the restroom and started to chat with some of our friends at the table who were RIGHT by the restroom door, i had not yet walked all around to the other side of the LONG table where my seat was...
thus i had not shown the ENTIRE side of the restaurant my underwear...
because the back of my skirt was tucked into my underwear...
oh, yes it was. not just a bit... a lot. all of it tucked into the undies. don’t ask how i didn’t notice. i don’t notice a lot of times when i need correction. i was just happy to not be making lunch at home and was unaware that my back side was breezier than it should have been.
i was just chatting for a minute or two at the side of the table, i can’t remember how long (please God let it have only been for about 10 seconds) when i felt someone tugging on something in my rear end area. which isn’t a feeling that one usually experiences in the middle of a restaurant... well, it isn’t a feeling that i usually experience in the middle of a restaurant, i can’t vouch for your restaurant experiences.
it was a neighbor of mine who had walked into the restaurant and was walking to her table and happened to spy my rear end just a’showing itself off to all. and Lord only knows how she recognized my derriere, but she did and she walked over and pulled my skirt down for me. PRAISE THE LORD FROM HEAVEN ABOVE that she walked in when she did and that her teenage children were not with her with their cell phones on the ready to capture the view...
and i will love her until my dying day. really, she is my favorite neighbor in the world now and when i drive past her house, i think really good thoughts about her.
and this is how i should feel about correction. that it is in effect a pulling down of my skirt over my underwear in a crowded restaurant.
not to heed discipline, regard reproof, accept correction, yield to Godly instruction would be as stupid (and lead to as much humiliation) as if i had justified that it was BEST for my skirt to be tucked into my underwear and that it was fine the way it was...
because it was not fine. it was embarrassing (and almost bare assing as well, really i could not resist adding that). and even though only one table (and my friend and her hubby) had the chance to view my undies, that was more than enough for my face to be sooooo red. and for me to be so grateful that she took it upon herself to correct my mistake.
so correction= less shame and poverty and my rear end not showing to the world. which leads to everyone taking a little sigh of relief.
i took this after last night’s chorus concert at rosalea’s school.
she played the recorder in the concert...
can i have a moment of SILENT thanksgiving that her year of playing the recorder is over...