Think Twice! - Coffee & Conversation

Have you ever had the feeling that someone was annoyed at you for something that you had done or said or written that was not what you had actually done, said or written but they just thought it was?

I was on the Hometalk Website one day and decided to leave a comment on a kid's craft someone had shared.

I mentioned that I loved their idea and it had given me an idea for something to make for my SS kids.

A few days later I noticed that I had a notification that someone had replied to my comment.

In I go to see if someone was asking me what my idea was, or if the author of the post was saying thank you for the comment only to be really taken aback with what I saw.

The reply to my comment was a sharply written one which basically was asking

What did you mean by SS?

I was very thankful that someone else had already seen it and replied with

 "I'm sure she means her Sunday School Class" 

and I then replied to confirm that was indeed exactly what I had meant.



Glancing at the location of the person who had asked the question I saw we were writing to a lady from Germany.  Obviously she had taken another meaning for my abbreviation.


How many times do we take for granted that people will know that we mean?


How many times do we just assume that people will understand because we know what we mean?


Perhaps I should have known better because I had lived in Belgium for over 6 years and in that time conversed with many different nationalities on a regular basis and there were times when there were misunderstandings just to do with phrases used in one language and how they translated to another language.


I have also lived in the US for 3 years and remember an instance where something I said could easily have been misunderstood when shopping with an American friend one Christmas

Looks like we need to think twice before we write!

I teach English as a Second language each week and I need to think carefully how I say things to the students  -  so I should be good at this.

"Looks like we need to think twice before we write!"

Do you think twice before you write?



Have you ever written something that someone misunderstood completely?

Writing Through Your Feelings - A Dose of Encouragement

Today I have another Guest Post for you.

It is still in the Dose of Encouragement Series but instead of a post from me it is one from our daughter Linda who is Teaching English as a Foreign Language in South Korea.

She wrote this on her own blog last year and I loved how she had been so open and honest about how she felt so I have asked if I could have it here to share with you all this week.
      
Linda is still on holiday with us from South Korea and hence this is going to be another really busy week for me.

After reading this you may be interested to have a look at Linda's blog which is written from her viewpoint as a writer who is a Christian and contains posts on her thoughts and also some of her short stories.


So over to Linda

I had a sort of argument with a friend and it left me rather uneasy.  

You see, this argument shouldn’t have happened, and it was because I was looking at the situation in the wrong way.  

Yes, we both did or said things that hurt each other, but when I look at the bigger picture, and how God is involved in it, I don’t see the hurt anymore.

Of course, at the time I wasn’t letting myself think in that nice way; I was looking at my selfish perspective.  

Sometimes we get hurt and we all have a natural reaction to it, which is usually to protect ourselves by seeing how others have done wrong by us.  Now-a-days my first response is to talk to God about situations I don’t understand or find hard to deal with, and this does help me, even if it takes a little time.

This time, however, I made a conscious decision to take a little space for myself, to get over what I was hurt by, and be selfish, by letting myself be hurt for a little while, before I would accept the better view that God had for it (which I already knew and agreed with).  It’s a bit silly, but I thought that sometimes we need to feel the pain in order to get over it, and if I just accepted what God was showing me as good, then I was avoiding the hurt and not really getting over it.

Well, then my argument happened and since then I have felt sick about how I acted and how the situation has been left. 

     What did I do to fix this? 

I couldn’t talk to the person about it, and I didn’t know how to explain anyway, so I did what I should have been doing and went to God.  He showed me some things I already knew, but because of my initial selfish reaction of not wanting to listen to it, I found this hard to accept.

      So I wrote about it.

I used to do this a lot; write a letter to someone to tell them how I feel, even if I know I will never give it to them.  These days I sometimes write my prayers, because I can focus better and this process helps me work things out.  This time, however, I wrote to the person, and do you know what?  God worked in that.  I was looking to God in the whole situation and suddenly it all changed from my tiny viewpoint to the bigger picture and the love I have for that friend.

Even though I am hurt by some things, I know that it can’t be any other way, and I know that I am happy and excited about whatever God has planned for me.  It’s a pity that I have to go through some pain, but this will all help me later.  I don’t feel like I can fix what I said easily, and I don’t know if I should give my friend the letter, but changing my attitude is a start and I hope it will show my friend that I don’t care about what we fought over; I care about our friendship.

After the argument mentioned, I could not be sure that I would ever have a chance to rectify, apologise or just fix the relationship, but I had to find a way to move on and be content with my life and my attitudes.  

God gives us the only way to move on through the guilt and shame we feel in any previous actions.  

His grace and mercy give us the chance to see that our humanity doesn’t have to limit us to being simply faulty humans.  

We are humans, full of fault, but Jesus gave us a way to get past that and move on to better things.  

Today Linda writes:

A year later, God has helped me learn that lesson and progress with it in more ways.......

If you would like to read further on her view of today then head on over to Elsie B Writes

Do you write through your feelings too?

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     Linda describes herself as:

     A writer from Northern Ireland, who has lived in a few other places and has a friend in God.

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