Judge Not...

I was reading a friend's blog and it got me thinking about something. My friend was describing an incident in which her sister in law's son drew with a Sharpie on their new sofa. The point of my friend's post was to extoll the virtues of microfiber, but in the course of her description of the incident, she felt the need to include the disclaimer that her sister-in-law is really a great mom -- and her two year old did not usually have access to Sharpie's, etc. This got me thinking...how sad is it that others reading that post would have thought not...wow that must have been so disheartening to see pen on your new sofa...but, why did the 2 year old have a Sharpie? Why do we do that to eachother? And just for clarification -- my friend only mentioned that in defense of her sister law -- not to be critical herself.

When I was about 4.5 months pregnant with Emma, a girl I worked with gave birth to her first child. This girl was only about 20 -- not married to the father of her child and she smoked all throughout the pregnancy. When she returned to work after her baby was a month old, she was showing me pictures of the baby. She was tiny -- only about 5 lbs. in part because her mother had smoked. I chided my co-worker for smoking. She and I are about the same height, but I assured her my baby would be a lot bigger because I was taking care of myself, not smoking, etc. Well, you know the story I'm sure. 3 weeks later Emma came, unexpectedly premature. She weighed 1 lb. 5 oz.

When I returned to work 3 weeks later (had to keep up the insurance -- she was a $1,000,000 kid) my co-worker asked me about my baby. She listened to Emma's saga, looked at the photos, even bought me a tiny preemie outfit. She never brought up my stupid, haughty, boastful remark. She outclassed me far and away. I think back on that lesson a lot. Really, we ought to judge not that we be not judged. We never know what's behind the next corner.