Today I felt small.
I had a dentist appointment and when they called to confirm yesterday, I said I’d be there at 11:20am (the time the appointment was made) to which the person I spoke with said, “No, 11:40am.” Okay, so I wrote it down and went on my way.
Today I walked into the dentist’s office a little before 11:40am and was asked how I could be helped. I said, “I’m here for an 11:40 appointment.” The dentist, in obvious displeasure, said, “No, you missed it. It was at 11:20. The hygienist waited 18 minutes for you and left.”
(WHAT?!?!)
I told her and the assistant next to her, that I received a call confirming my appointment and confirmed the time as 11:20 and was corrected that it was at 11:40. They both denied this and said there was no way this mistake could have been made…it doesn’t work with their schedule. We went through this multiple times to no avail.
Well…someone was wrong and it wasn’t me. (I think, the assistant didn’t want to admit a mistake in front of her boss…that’s my opinion.)
I know some people would have no problem letting the dentist have it…or having their husband’s call back and give them a lashing. Or frankly telling them that they no longer have their business.
But me?
I really don’t do well with confrontation, especially when I’m right and being told I’m wrong. It feels like my very character and integrity is being questioned. I get to this place where I struggle…I can barely speak. I was trying to hold it together without crying right then and there.
I just felt small and belittled.
I’ve been in that place so many times in my life. I’ve lived hearing people tell me I’m stupid, worthless, and that I’d never amount to anything. I’ve see the looks of disdain and displeasure. I’ve met the obvious ridicule of peers simply because I wasn’t “cool enough,” didn’t go to the right school, or didn’t look the part.
I’ve felt small before. This was no new feeling.
But within me there was a rising. A fight, a struggle. I may have been here before, but I also know the Truth. I know that these things, these emotions, these words are not me. I was fighting to apply truth. Fighting to remember that what Jesus says of me is true…not the past that was trying to wash over me…not the insinuations these women before me were making.
It took all that was in me to hold it together…to balance the truth uprising with the easy that it is to succumb to fear, rejection, and anger. I can’t say I didn’t react poorly, because when I got home I told my husband I just wanted to go out to eat for lunch…simply because I felt like it.
Like, gyros would somehow ease the pain and make everything right. We didn’t. Spending money wasn’t going to cure the pain I felt…but Truth would.
It takes work to walk rightly, to live in truth…it isn’t easy and it isn’t for the faint of heart. It is a battle.
And today…I think I won.
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