Monday, February 18, 2013

Parable of the Broken Glass

Maybe not so much a parable, but a story that has taught me a weird lesson since Jack and I have been married. At our wedding, we got a set of four glasses that I just loved. They looked really nice, so I hoped to take good care of them forever. Within the first couple months, I dropped one on the kitchen floor and it shattered into a hundred little pieces. I felt so awful, but of course it wasn't really a big deal. Eventually I got over it.
A little while later, I knocked another one off the kitchen table and it shattered on the floor just like the first one. Once again, I felt awful. My favorite glasses and I had broken half of them by being clumsy and careless. What kind of wife am I to be breaking everything we own?
A couple days ago I had one sitting on the floor next to the couch. My phone fell off the arm of the couch and instead of hearing the thud of it hitting the ground, I heard the glass breaking. At that moment, I realized what wimpy glasses they were. Sure, I love them. But if my phone (which weighs virtually nothing) could break one, anything could break them.
So the story I learned here is sometimes when things go wrong, it's not as much your fault as you think. Sometimes you just have a wimpy glass.

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