It's Hard to Get the Mayo Back in the Jar.

In my hometown, there is a delightful restaurant where carhops come to my car window to take my order. This place has this celestial combination of every good condiment on earth mixed with a touch of sugar. They call it special sauce and I am fairly certain it's on God's hamburgers. It gets along famously with the tenderloins and baskets of fried cheese served daily at this hometown hangout.

My attempts at making my own  little version of said delicious condiment of mystery went slightly left of perfect tonight.
Instead of taking the extra 3.62 seconds to grab a spoon and scoop out an appropriate portion of mayonnaise, I impulsively picked up the mayo and (go 'head, shake your heads) shook the bottle until some came out. And by some, I mean a humongous mayo-jar-shaped glob that would make the guy on Man vs. Food blush.

Like any mediocre cook, I panicked.
And then it prevailed upon me that I should take a small spoon and scoop some unblemished mayonnaise back into the container. I tried to do just that, but I could only get a couple of spoonfuls back in the jar, and boy, did it ever make a massive mess.

The same thing happened to me earlier today.
Only it wasn't a condiment that splatted everywhere , but rather my careless, thoughtless words.
I deeply hurt someone I love very much. Instead of taking a few seconds to evaluate my words, change them into something encouraging and uplifting, they came rolling violently out. And although I apologized, there was no getting all that verbal mayonnaise back into the jar unscathed.

The thing about words is that they do hurt.

No matter how unconsciously those little daggers leave our voice boxes, they WILL land somewhere and no matter how sorry we are, we cannot reach up collect those words from the air into which we so hastily spoke them.



I wish I could get my words back into that ole mayonnaise jar. Sadly, that's just not an option.

What I CAN do is learn from my little "special sauce" disaster and my ugly words and vow to take a few extra moments to make sure my words will build up and create next time instead of breaking down and destroying.

There is one whose rash words are like sword thrusts, but the tongue of the wise brings healing.
Proverbs 12:18

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"And I've concluded something else. That the words people say to us not only have shelf life but have the ability to shape life."
Bob Goff, Love Does