pride, or something like it

On our way home last Friday, Matt and I were, or at least I was, feeling especially giddy about it being the weekend. I think it's because the previous weekend felt a little nuttier than usual, so I was looking forward to a bit of relaxing and house-straightening.

We got off the metro at Rosslyn, as usual, and were headed into the building there (at the Tivoli entrance, if you know what I'm talking about) to get our car out of the garage. You know how sometimes, when you're opening a door and walking through it, the 'personal space' issue gets a bit tricky? (I do believe perhaps only my D.C.-area friends will know what the heck I'm talking about.) Especially these particular doors. You open one, or it's still swinging closed, and you start to step through it, and someone on the other side was about to step through it, too ... anyway, really no big deal. Unless you're totally having a bad day, or just a complete bunghole in the first place, I guess. Because I assure you that Matt and I are not rude people when it comes to respecting others' space in social situations. This particular lady we ran into that day (not literally) was one or both of those things that I described, and when Matt stepped up to the door (one of four at that spot) and walked through it, instead of holding it for her, I guess, she turned around and said, "F**khead!" We were rather shocked, and unsure that we'd heard her correctly. Matt turned around and said, "Uh, What?!" She paused for a beat, then repeated herself, rather emphatically. I grabbed his arm and hauled him away, lest he come up with a suitably sarcastic, not foul but accurately evil response (which he is capable of -- and, let's just say this woman was not without her physical flaws), and we blew off steam by making up comments and saying them to each other instead of to her. Barely a half-step better than an actual altercation, I realize. I found myself shaking my head and wondering what it is that GETS to people sometimes. I mean, we're all human, for pity's sake! Can you be a LITTLE kind? Just slightly? When you're in a public place and someone does something that really wasn't a big deal AT ALL?? Matt ventured that she must be having a very bad day. He was feeling a bit more charitable than I was at that point.

We went on our merry way, picked up Lizzy, went home. Matt made us dinner, then went out with his friends (pre-planned. I'm big into the pre-planning, now that I have a kid and a pre-plan means that SHE is what I do all night if Matt does something else). Lizzy and I played, she went to bed, I caught up on some taped TV shows, and didn't hit the hay until about 1:30 a.m. (really late for me these days.)

About two minutes later, I hear a car drive up and male voices outside. Some door slamming. MY car doors.

A bit of background: Matt asked me earlier that evening "if it would be cool if his brother came over and crashed that night." In all honesty, I'm not a big fan. But Matt grew up, and still somewhat resides in, this culture among his good friends that mi casa es su casa, and it's totally normal to have someone, or someones, sprawled across your furniture the next morning, possibly with the tv on still from the night before. Me, not so much. The mind attempts, at times, to imagine 1) my father having friends come over and 'crash' on our couch in my childhood, and 2) my mother's probable response to that. It Just Didn't Happen That Way in our household. In fact, if pressed to name a good close friend of my dad's, I really can't. It was kinda my mom and my dad, and then us kids.
So it's the classic, "This is the way the normal world does things, and you're just out of whack, so loosen up/get with the program" mentality on both sides, where Matt and I are concerned. He grew up in the wacky, out of control household(s) -- product of divorce -- and I grew up in the small-town, apple pie, rebelling meant I belched at the dinner table or passive-aggressively 'forgot' to help clean up that night.

On with the story. So it turns out that Matt has brought over his brother Nick, and one of his best friends, Shane, who might as well be their relative, really. And, you know, both are okay fellows. Both are rather heavy smokers, though, which irks me where Lizzy is concerned (okay, maybe I AM uptight). And, as you all probably remember, we just got a new couch. Which I did not put in one penny to buy. And which has a pull-out bed feature. But is that ever utilized? What, when it's so easy just to fall asleep on the couch itself? Thus sealing its fate to be as worthless and middle-sinky as the couch we just threw out? HA.

So they go in the kitchen and start ho-ho-hoing and rifling through the fridge or whatever. I was SO MAD. Why? I honestly cannot say. The best (and worst) I can come up with was a giant wave of entitlement. This is My House. How Dare Matt bring people into My House. It was Barely Okay for his brother to "crash" there. But TWO people? Two half-drunk, smoky-stinky people!! NO. So I went downstairs -- again, at nearly 2 a.m. -- and told him it would be the Last Time, in loud tones (but not too loud -- sleeping tot upstairs). Matt was unimpressed with this public display, and came upstairs to tell me so. So he stood there in the bedroom, as I was trying to tell him to go away, nothing good would come of this conversation while I was so hot under the nightgown collar, and let me sleep. Go play with his friends, I believe I said. Go wallow on the couch. Go have a smoke (outside). But Matt was not content to let sleeping girls lie. He told me that I was being unreasonable, unfair to his friends, and disrespectful to him. Which was all true. I told him his friends were losers, and that they needed to not come over in this way.

And then, when he finally did go back downstairs, I lay there, awake and steaming, thinking about what Jesus would've done. Remembering something I'd read that day, or maybe the morning before, in Oswald Chambers' "My Utmost For His Highest" -- it's relatively easy to step up and big the big person, to be holy and helpful, in the big, public moments. It's much harder, and much more telling, in the 24/7, daily grind. In your own home. With people you maybe don't like so much.

And, you know, that whole sharing your blessings thing. That whole, living openly and holding things with open hands. SHARING. LOVING. Extending GRACE. Letting people maybe put their shoes up on your brand new couch (which they probably didn't do anyway), because it's a couch. And they're people. People who, for all I know, know one Christian -- ME. And which is more important -- couches, or people?

I managed to sneak out the door early the next morning (pre-planned -- I went scrapbooking) without having to look anyone in the eye.

I've been praying ever since, each morning, that God gives me enough love and grace each day to treat people with kindness. I have extended a definite lack of kindness and grace recently. Sunday's service really hit the spot, too. More on the Sermon on the Mount -- living with open hands. Not worrying. Not hoarding. Not valuing things that aren't eternal.

Oh, and not being judgmental... I loved what Mike said about how, in a world that lacked judgment, the People magazines and the Cosmopolitans would lay in a heap near the cash register, gathering dust. Ah, for that day. If we didn't CARE how skinny or fat Lindsay Lohan was, she wouldn't feel she needed to lose weight. And then lose too much. And then get lambasted for that. And then decide to gain it back... Okay, I do work in the features dept., so give me a bit of a break for knowing all this.

People are eternal. Stuff, isn't. Someday, I want to remember this, all day (and all night) long.