by Don Mingo
CEO of Mingo Coaching Group
One of my principles is, “Life is too short to spend it standing in long lines.” For that reason, I try to stay away from the big stores lending themselves to the Great-Wall-of-China-type lines. Yet, on one particular day I found myself waiting in quite a lengthy “queue” as the Brits call it (I did spend 22 years in South Africa after all). Behind me no fewer than five people stood showing their painful impatience. In front, was a woman loaded with her cart of goods and five children. Four of those children were under five years of age. After checking other aisles for an opportunity to move things along more quickly, I realized none existed. Here we all stood, whether we liked it or not.
As the cashier rung up the woman’s items, her speed and efficiency abruptly derailed as a host of items qualifying for payment by WIC coupons needed special attention. WIC is a federal assistance program of the Food and Nutrition Service of the USDA for healthcare and nutrition of low-income pregnant women, breastfeeding women, and infants and children under the age of five. As the cashier scrutinized each item matching it with the appropriate coupon, those behind me became restless. And vocal, mumbling under their collective breath.
The redheaded women in front of me with all the kids did not waiver, nor did she show any emotion to the deeply exhaling, gawking heads in the line. As the process plodded on, the fellow directly behind me began mumbling, “I bet she doesn’t even know who all their fathers are …”
Biting my tongue, but silently hoping those words might be his last, I heard him go on. With raised voice, a new barrage of unkindness came from his mouth:
“Hey lady, do you even know who these kids’ fathers are? Come on, here!”
Since two of the children were black, two were white, and the fifth obviously had special needs, I’m sure in his keen mind he thought perhaps some deep truth existed. Yet the redheaded woman, who so patiently took care of all those well-behaved kids, and worked with a handful of organized WIC coupons, carefully matched each coupon in sync with each qualifying item. She quietly carried on with her tasks. At some point, this bully behind me uttered another cruelly insensitive accusation, suggesting that perhaps this woman employed herself in some wicked nighttime activity, and that was the reason for the different varieties of offspring.
Just then, as I began to turn and confront the man, the oldest little girl in the group ahead of me, about seven-years-old, looked at me, puzzled and confused, and asked, “Papa, what is that man talking about?”
The question itself totally uncovered the man’s ignorance, cruelness, and insecurity. As “Papa,” that is, I readied myself to verbally confront the man when my redheaded daughter-in-law said, “Dad, just leave it alone. Obviously, the man has never heard of foster parenting.”
His ignorance served up a huge helping of shame and embarrassment upon himself.
You see, I agreed to go to the big store that day to help my son’s wife with the children. Two of those wonderful children are my grandchildren! The third little boy is my adopted special-needs grandson, and the two little black children are foster kids, and perhaps will soon be my grandkiddos, too. My son and his wife have now cared for close to a dozen special-needs foster infants over the past six years, and my wife Kathy and I are moving in and teaming up with them to help care for more.
A blister is a small to large bubble on the skin filled with puss, fluid, or serum caused by friction, burning, or other damage. That day blistered my daughter-in-law and me, and it impacted my oldest granddaughter, as a man in complete ignorance leveled inhumane charges against a mother who is a pediatric nurse and foster parent caring for five children. My wounds and anger over what I termed a “verbal crime” blistered me and took some time to go away. But, this wonderful lady my son married cautiously corrected me, “Dad, it’s not the first time this has happened and it will not be the last. You can’t engage in people’s ignorance and stupidity.”
She is correct.
I thought of Jesus’ words when he said, “Better a millstone tied about one’s neck and cast into the deepest sea than to offend one of these little ones.” Those words give me some comfort, but I can’t help feel sorry for the man and his unmet needs that cause him to be so hatefully unkind.
Jesus taught us to forgive those who trespass against us. Surely this man trespassed upon our emotional premises that day. His ignorance caused great blisters in our lives. Those blisters challenge us to be as understanding as my daughter-in-law was that day and as innocently inquisitive as my granddaughter too, and more importantly, to be as loving as Jesus who said, “Father forgive them; they know not what they do.”
Don Mingo enjoys wildlife and nature photography, his sons, grandkids, and coffee with his wife Kathy. He blogs at “Just My Thoughts” (www.donaldmingo.com).