Be Bold and Give the Truth this Holiday

While playing soccer last weekend, my son pointed and laughed at me. We were running around on a frosty morning, and I had developed a string of snot dangling from my left nostril. I thanked my son for drawing my attention to the booger chain (while drawing the attention of everyone else, too), and made the very classy move of grabbing it with my hand and wiping it on my leg (why I didn’t wipe it on the grass is a mystery to me). Other than some exclamations of, “Oooh yuck,” and, “Gross,” it was over and we played on. Luckily, in the age of COVID, there were no handshakes or high-fives for the other players to awkwardly avoid after the game. I did notice no one wanted to rub my leg in celebration.

None of us like having our embarrassing imperfections brought to our attention. But sometimes, it takes the perspective of someone else for us to see what is right in front of our own faces (or dangling from our own faces). That external perspective is important, and it must be shared with us in order for us to take control of the uncontrollable. When the status quo is a disgusting mess, we need to be shown how badly we need to clean ourselves up.

December is the month of giving, and there really is no better time to give the ones we love a heads-up about their boogers. OK, I’m not really talking about snot anymore. I’m talking about the people close to us…