Some months ago I was in Orange County California. I was able to be with a wonderful friend whose wife was in the last days of her life. He told me how he had learned so much from her about trust and love and faith and dying with dignity and peace. She died the day I left to come home. They had just celebrated 50 years of marriage the week before.
The day after I was with him I visited longtime friends in Huntington Beach. We had so much fun and fantastic conversation. After leaving them I would receive a phone call that would leave me getting scammed out of $1000. That’s right. They were professional in speech with clarity and knowledge of their subject and the GPS was constantly going off which distracted me. I was not on my game.
Two days later I stopped in for my once a year visit to Wal-Mart. I needed to get some greeting cards, stamps and cash advancement of $40. The cashier got distracted for 10 minutes trying to figure how to get the stamps. We got it all worked out and I left. The next morning I went into a coffee shop and realized I hadn’t been given my $40.
I took the receipt back to Wal-Mart and told them what cash register I had been at and they checked the records and handed me $40. Wow! I might go to Wal-Mart twice a year now!
When I returned home, I went to my chiropractic appointment. Upon leaving I began to walk down six concrete steps. The next thing I knew, I was lying in the parking lot face down, blood everywhere and a shattered phone. I gathered myself and drove to my niece’s home. She is a nurse and her husband is a doctor. As they bandaged me up (with the help of their seven year old daughter who exclaimed, “I hate blood! I’m never going to be a doctor!”) their shirtless, nearly four year old son would step in and say encouraging words like, “Hey, Uncle Steve, did you see my scar? It’s really big!” Of course it was about two weeks old, but he insisted upon having a new Superman band-aid. As they continued to clean me up his father told him to step back and stop the chatter because this was about Uncle Steve, not him. When they finished and walked away, Noah (the 4 year old) stepped back in and said, “Uncle Steve did you see this scar?”
It was a week of “humble pie.” At first it is bitter in taste, but soon there is a sweetness derived from an acquired taste. I was humbled in the presence of an amazing man who spoke of how a fragile, broken woman had taught him more about life than the strongest man alive. I was humbled by my lack of focus and the difficulty of trying to take responsibility for what was my irresponsibility and it cost me. I was humbled by a company (whose doors I do not frequent) because of their impeccable integrity and graciousness toward me, and I was humbled by the overflowing compassion of family who were interruptible and reminded by a four year old that we all have scars…
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