Combative Cover ups

I am so fortunate! My mother loves to iron and every week she comes to my house and irons. meticulously creating creases on my husbands shirts and proudly lining up her completed masterpieces, she is am ironing wonder! I am so blessed by her love of ironing!

This week, upon returning home from school, I walked into an interesting sight. On the kitchen floor was a bright blue sheet wadded up against the dishwasher. My mother declared that the dishwasher was spitting out water! 

A couple things ran through my mind.

• I had turned the dishwasher on before I left in the morning.
• Did she use dish soap in the dishwasher?

Mom, What soap did you use? I carefully questioned. I knew the answer before she even came over to the kitchen sink. As she picked up the bottle I could see why it had been confusing to her. My husband, who loves a good deal had bought the econo size container of liquid dish soap. 


This indeed was the culprit! I explained to her that we use  little square dishwasher tablets and not the liquid. 

Embarrassed, my mother reverted to what I like to call combative cover ups. "Well, you should put them on different sides of the cabinet!", she barked at me. I hate to tell you, but it gave me so much pleasure to open up the other side of the cabinet and reveal the dishwasher tablets!  If that wasn't enough I also sarcastically said, "like this?"

Why did I need to do this?  I really was just wanting to show her that we had the dishwasher soap and that she should use those in the future if she wanted to run the dishwasher, but in a blink of an eye, I had become combatively sarcastic! 

Why combative? I have the disease known as I am right! At least I think I am or I am going to make you believe I am!  I am sure I inherited it from my mother! This disease gets in the way all the time! It causes me to say and do things that I would never believe that I was capable of!  Do you know of this disease?  Has it found it's way into your heart?


James 3:6 says that our tongue can set the course of our whole world on fire. (ouch) 

I am a work in progress and so is my mother.  My tongue has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. For this reason, James 3:1-12 is important to me.

With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. James 3:1-10

Thank you Lord for teaching me through dish soap! May I reflect whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—may I think about such things. Jann