Potty Mouths

Well, the weather is nice, and with nice weather, the neighbors seem to expect that you will cut your grass and do all that yard work stuff. Sigh. Since clearly, I am a princess, I don't do yard work. Ever. Ok, well maybe sometimes, but not without a lot of complaining. And why let three perfectly good boys go to waste? So their job was to fill bags up with pine cones. Pine cones, those things that riding lawn mowers don't like a whole lot. And with that chore came cash. Yep. They got paid, which meant dinner at McDs. So off we go for a nice late spring treat.

Did you know God likes to hang out at restaurants? Me either, but He does. So we are sitting there enjoying our happy meals and all, when a group of 5 big fellas come in and sit at the table right next to us. One of 'em stands, being it's just a four seater. By this time we are enjoying hot fudge sundaes and trying to have a couple of dinner conversations with the kids.

And there's those loud fellas, using every foul combination of vowels and consonants possible. I mean, "I" was educated sitting there. The "f" word and the "g-d" word was thrown around as frequently as we might use the word "the" in a sentence. It was awful. And just as I was so tempted to tell these boys that they needed to tone down the naughty tongue wagging, that still small voice inside of me said not to. Was it fear? Not at all. As some of you well know, I don't back down from the devil. Well, I had already made eye contact with several of them, hoping that they would no doubt sense my disapproval and would on their own, out of the kindness of their hearts, or just plain good manners, stop with at least the worst of it, but instead, they gave me the "whatcha gonna do about it looks." Very annoying. Don't they know who I am? I mean I have a tiara and everything. Jeesh.

So as I'm sitting there listening to only about the first five minutes of these colorful metaphors being slung around my children, I start to get a little miffed. Ok, a lot miffed. And then God gently reminds me that these people are lost, and how can I expect them to act like anything other than lost people. He's right you know. If they don't know Him, they don't know how to act like Him. And if they don't know Him, it's up to us to tell them of Him.

So I wait for an open door, seeing that clearly these fellas are my target. But no doors open up. So I sit and pray and wait and nothing. And really, since my children are with us, I'm not so very brave. I look over at Frank and he's all mellow....so I'm like, what's up with you? And the whole time, he's over there getting wacked with the Holy Ghost, getting tanked on the new wine. So not fair. Well at this point I'm not feeling like we can do much with the crowd the way it is, the fiestyness of those fellas, the loudness of the room, and mostly the fact that my small children are there. Mama bear and all. So we decide to leave. I never said a word to Frank that these guys were the "ones", however, while we are walking to the van, Frank says, "Did you get a word yet?" I love it when we are on the same page like that. So we talk a minute and he says he doesn't have a word but he KNOWS he can't leave without talking to those guys. So I get the kids settled into the van and Frank goes back inside and has a little chat with those boys.

Now, can you guess what they THOUGHT Frank was coming in for? Yep. They thought that Mr. Preacher Man took his sweet little family out to the van and was coming in to give them "what-fors" for talking potty talk in front of them. Know what they got? Yep. The love of Jesus. Don't ya just love surprising people. I watched through the window what was going on. Apparently he walked up to their table and told them he had a message for them. Then he started speaking life into them and offered to pray for anyone. One guy DID want prayer for his life to get on track (WOW) and the other guys sat there very humbly and received, rather well, the words of life and hope that Frank was speaking to them. It was a God moment. And one those boys won't likely ever forget. Going to McDs, getting some chow, then talking dirty in front of some princess and her kids, then low and behold, not getting reamed for it, but instead getting the message of Jesus and being loved and accepted by some guy still dressed in his dress shirt from work. Now that's good stuff.