Mailbag: Do You Need to Take a Look in the Mirror?

My husband and I get lots of messages from folks who read our blogs (my Loving Life at Home and his All Truth is God’s Truth, in addition to this family blog).

Sadly, many of the comments we receive are negative, like the people who claim I’m robbing my children of their childhood by requiring them to do chores, or the woman who accused me of being sexist because I used masculine pronouns to answer another reader’s question (about her son), or the one who thought it was selfish of me to pray for Waverly Fabric at a price I could afford (God answered anyway — I found 40 yards of the exact pattern I wanted at a garage sale for 25-cents a yard!).

That’s why it feels like a breath of fresh air when we hear from people who actually like something we’ve written, like the following reader:

Dear Jennifer,

Have you ever gone looking for a laser pointer and God hands you a mirror instead? That’s what happened to me recently. We are currently expecting blessing number 5, have more than we deserve, and are surrounded with beautiful, faithful friends.

Still, life gets busy and stressful and people get cranky. Things here had been tense for no apparent reason, but tense none the less. My husband and I had a couple of disagreements in which I ended up yelling at him. I found myself feeling completely entitled as I “typically keep my mouth shut and he needed to hear it”.

Fortunately as I was busy trying to find that laser pointer to shine on all my husbands faults, God provided me a mirror through 2 of your posts: “7 Ways to Ruin Your Marriage” and “25 Ways to Communicate Respect“.

With these tools I was able to get off my high horse and see the errors (intended to be plural) in my ways.

I was focusing on my needs and his mistakes. Heaven forbid anyone follow me around and point out every time I don’t get it quite right. I immediately put into action your suggestions and even sent him a list of specific things I would be doing to honor him and this family.

Thank you for being a light even when it shines in places we don’t want to see.

BTW, I’ll leave out the positive impact it’s had on our “alone time”. 😉 Thanks again and May God Bless you abundantly.

(Name Withheld)

Has anything like that ever happened to you?

Have you ever gone hunting for a laser to point out someone else’s faults, but God handed you a mirror instead?

It shouldn’t surprise us that He would do such a thing. After all, Jesus warned us about the danger of trying to remove a speck from another’s eye when we have a log in our own. (Luke 6:42)

Is there anything in your eye right now that’s obstructing your vision? How will you go about getting it out?