Life Lessons

These past two Mondays have put me through the wringer in the way only a Monday can. Both of them have echoed the same theme - I messed up, I'm sorry, please help me fix it!

When I was in college I worked at a rubber stamp shop (I know, right) and it was such an amazing place. It was about this time of year and I had some alone time in the shop so I decided to create custom stamped gift tags for my Christmas gifts. The studio was filled to overflowing with ribbons, beads, stamps, inks, papers and the like. Being a rubber stamping novice, I was completely in over my head. I was using a 12 days of Christmas stamp set and stamping red first, letting it dry, then gold on top. Squish! Right into the gold ink pad went the rubber stamp I had just used to ink the red design. I had forgotten to wipe the stamp and now I had partridge-in-a-pear-tree'd the gold ink pad with red, rendering it useless to any true stamping connoisseur. What did I do? I panicked. And I cleaned it all up, slapped the top back on the ink pad and put it back where I'd found it. Two days later, when the owner asked me what had happened to the ink pad, I lied. "Who knows?" Ugh, Amanda. What were you thinking? Who else would have done it? (The elf on the shelf wasn't even a thing yet.)

Last Monday I handed the lady at the paint counter the wrong chip. She mixed it for me and 8 hours later when I was ready to paint the dining room, I had a complete panic. I had erroneously had her mix Sherwin Williams Peach Preserves when what I wanted was Valspar Peach Preserves. "I messed up, I'm sorry, please help me fix it!" Against Lowes' policy, the manager took my bad paint back and mixed me new.

Last night at 8pm, after procrastinating a MONTH on a quilting swap project, I realized all the blocks I'd made for the project were half an inch short in both directions and could not be fixed and mailed by today's deadline. "I messed up, I'm sorry, please help me fix it!" I got approval from the swap moderator to stitch any kind of block that I could make work with my messed up blocks and already cut fabric. Even still, everything I touched seemed to go wrong because I was rushing things. I stayed up until 3am working on it and worked from 7am to 4pm today, in my PJs, with nary a break for food nor drink. Julian was very gracious to me, as was the swap moderator (and even the sweet lady at the post office) and I got my blocks sent off in the knick of time.

If I could say anything to my 18-year-old self, it would be that by refusing to admit that you are wrong, you are stealing opportunities other people have to show you grace and help you make things right. People are so much more willing to offer forgiveness to a person who can say "this is all my fault, and I'm sorry, and I can't make it right without you."

Life lessons. They take it right out of me. I need a meal and a bath.