Self Righteousness

Self Righteousness is a trait that I absolutely cannot stand. Imagine my surprise when I had a flashback of a very self righteous moment of my own. It was triggered by an event yesterday, where a young African American man knocked on the door of our house. My boys were home with me, it was 4:00 in the afternoon and we were completely vulnerable. I opened the door slightly to the young man on my doorstep and listened to him give his spill about how he was working with a company called Urban Community movement or something like that. According to this young man, the company he worked for had a mission to give kids from underprivledged communities a chance to make it in life. He then explained that working door to door was not an exciting or enjoyable task, but he was working for his 5 year old daughter. As he was speaking, my son’s stood in the back of our foyer anxiously watching me and listening to him, not because he was an African American, or a man, but because he was a stranger on our doorstep. My expression was friendly and I acted as though I was listening attentively as he showed me the list of magazines that he was selling. What I was really paying attention to was the fact that it was pouring down rain, and he had no umbrella. His coat was probably at one time what we would refer to as a rain coat, but as he was talking to me I could tell that it was soaked. Beads of water streamed down his face as he talked and I fought the urge to ask him inside out of the dripping rain. In the back of my mind I pictured myself inviting him in and then him pulling a gun or grabbing me in front of my children. So, the fear won, and I let him stand in the rain. After he had given me his speech, I knew that I could not buy anything from him without my husband giving me the “Why did you do that? We didn’t need any magazines” speech. I looked down and told him that I didn’t really have a check book of my own and that my husband usually made the financial decisions and that he could come back if he wanted. He said okay and asked what time my husband would be home, I told him around five. He smiled and said have a good day and walked down my steps out into the downpour. As I watched him go into the rain and across the street I knew that I couldn’t just let him leave. My compassion for this man was so great that I told the kids to put their snacks on the couch and come with me to the car. I found an umbrella downstairs and we all three jumped in the car. The whole time my oldest son said, “Mom, should you be doing this? He will probably be okay?” and I told him no, that the man needed an umbrella. We found him leaving our neighbors house and crossing the street. I drove up to him and rolled my window down. “I thought you might need an umbrella,” I told him and handed it to him out my window. He smiled and said “Thank you.” Then I before I knew it I said, “Well, I have a little checking account of my own that I might can buy some magazines out of, walk over that way and I will pull over” So we followed him up the hill and then I stopped expecting him to just walk up to the window with the umbrella in hand. Instead he jumped into the front seat of my car. My heart started racing and I glanced anxiously back at the boys who just stared at him as he sat in my front seat. I was in my pajama pants and a t-shirt, and had no shoes on. He got out his pamphlet and I asked him how much Men’s Journal was, “Fifty dollars for three years.” He told me. Yikes. I didn’t have that kind of money. So I asked him to find the cheapest one on there and it was Women’s Day for $35.00. I hastily made out my check and filled out the form, all the while nervous that I was putting my children in danger even though he seemed perfectly nice. After thanking me, he folded up his pamphlet, opened the car door and the umbrella and walked on down the street.
What bothers me about this exchange was that all the while I felt sorry for this man, I had a general distrust of him. There was a smell that hung about him that I can’t quite place but that repelled me not in a gross way, but more of a weary fearful way. He smelled like pal mal cigarettes, mixed with the slight hint of beer from the day before, along with a musty odor that clung to his clothes. When he was in front of me at my door I could smell him and it made me not want to look him in the face. When he got into my car, the scent was so overpowering that I wanted to roll the window down. After he left, I could still smell it in my nostrils. His smell does not bother me as much as my reaction to him does. I was compassionate, and hospitable, although fearful and distrustful at the same time. Even after we got back to our house I thought that I had done the wrong thing, that I had just given him $35 that I would never see any magazines. Then I looked at the picture of my mother on my prized antique dresser in the living room and remembered a time when I showed less compassion and zero tolerance and was ashamed.

Mom had only been baptized about a year before I became pregnant with Connor. She was very active in her church and was really becoming a good person, the person that she probably always was underneath the veil of alcohol. I was eating an early dinner with her at a restaurant in Trussville, and I can't remember if I had Tucker with me or not, but I know that I was pregnant with Connor. I was in a bad mood, as usual for those days and we were sitting at the table when a hispanic boy, about the age of 8 walked up to our table to ask for money. The memory is hazy but I think that my mom might have given him a $5 bill. I do remember that I was not very charitable and even got angry at the fact that the restaurant had let a soliciter of any kind in the building. After the boy left our table I told my mom that I was going to tell the hostess that there was a child soliciting money from the tables and that she might want to get rid of him. Sure enough, about five minutes later the manager walked the boy out of the restaurant. My mother was infuriated with me. She told me that I was not a good Christian, that I was a hypocrite and a spoiled one at that. I remember that we argued over it for a few minutes and then I realized that she was right, and I wanted to run outside into the parking lot and take the boy a few dollars that I had in my purse. When I walked outside, he was no where to be found. I remember I cried back at the table over what I had done and that mom told me to forget about it because there was nothing I could do about it at that point. I still felt bad for weeks later and wished to see the little boy again.
On that day, my mother was a better represenative of Christ than I was and the realization hit me hard. I had been baptized years earlier, had been a member of a church for years, and even taught Sunday School. How could this woman who drank half of her life away be closer to God's word than I was?? Easily, she had been brought to her knees and had felt His hands lift her up. At the time Brad and I both had successful careers, one precious child already and another healthy baby boy on the way. It had been years since I had been on my knees before God because I thought I had it all together and basically was doing fine on my own.
That all changed when Connor was born a few months after this incident at the restaurant. After a 14 hour labor of suffering from constant vomiting as a result of being allergic to my epidural, I was dehydrated and felt very close to death. I had an emergency c-section and saw Connor for a second before I had to turn my head on the operating table and throw up again. Hours later as I sat in my room alone, the NICU doctor came with a nurse to tell me that my baby had a hole in his lung that had deflated when he had taken his first deep breath coming out of my womb. The doctor said that he would have to stay down in the NICU for monitoring but that I could come down and see him the next day. I laid in the hospital bed that night, in and out of conciousness looking at the empty bassinet beside me thinking, "Where is my baby? This isn't supposed to happen, he was fine!" The next morning on my way down to the NICU in a wheel chair the same Dr found me and told me that Connor had tested positive for Group B strep and would need to have a spinal tap, and stay hooked up to an iv for antibiotics for a minimal of 14 days. Thankfully they caught the Group B strep before it became spinal meningitis, and our doctor informed us that it was actually God's hand that caused them to find the bacteria in the first place. If Connor's lung had not collapsed, then they would not have ran the routine bacteria test. We could have gone home with a healthy baby,only to have to return with a terminally ill baby a few days later. I had been on my knees at that point for 5 days and was afraid to stop praying. I would not feel as though Connor was out of the clutches of that bacteria until I walked out of the hospital with him. Each day, as I held my tiny baby, who was hooked up to an IV in his little hands, then his feet, and finally his forhead, I would beg God to make him healthy and strong. On day 14 my husband and I walked out of that hospital with our baby boy and brought him home. My dad was there with Tucker and they both loved on him in our den before we took him upstairs to lay in his crib for the first time. I saw my dad eyes well up with tears as he patted Connor's little back and say "Welcome Home little man"
Once again a circumstance had brought me to my knees and I realized how much I still needed God in my life everyday. Not just the days that are going bad, but the good days as well. Now I thank God for the sun as it rises, the rain as it falls, my car as it runs, our house as it stands and most of all I thank God for my children, my husband and my family.
I pray that I am no longer self righteous because I have no right to be. I am NOTHING without God. I pray that the boy who came to our house yesterday did not sense my fear of him, or my reaction to his smell. I pray that he saw a little piece of Christ in me, because that was my inention. I think now that I know where I have smelled that particular mix of smells before. There was a homeless man who hung out around a bank building that I worked at downtown. We all spoke to him and were friendly to him, but he had the same smell. I now pray that the boy that I gave my umbrella to, had a place to sleep that night. I hope that he was not homeless. I am ashamed for being so sensitive to his smell and for fearing his presence around my children. I can only hope that he felt my sincere desire to help him.