Thankful Thursday: a little about the woman with Pink hair

This Thursday, I am thankful for challenges that require me to do things I used to do for wrong reasons for right ones.  I'm thankful for the opportunity to stand up for my child/children in a way they could see and recognize as such.  I'm thankful for the challenge of staying away from personal attacks even when the other person with whom I am dealing resorts to them.

Yesterday, a woman at the market said something unkind to my eldest daughter.  It was inappropriate and if she actually spoke with rather than at my child, she never ever would've said what she did.  At first I was going to let it pass, as I have been challenged to do (in my nature I have always been a "quick to fight" sorta gal).  Over the last few years I've realized that I should just let it pass.  The more I attempted to do so over this issue, the more sick I felt about it... particularly because of the way my child looked at me and questioned me over this woman's words.

So, even though she was a few feet past us, I approached her to tell her she was wrong for saying what she said to my child.  She was defensive and retorted with additional information that revealed even further that she had really no clue what she was talking about and simply continued to argue only because she didn't want to back down and/or admit she had spoken unkindly and wrongly to a young girl.  Her arguments were horribly faulty and crumbled at every question I poked toward them.  Worst of all, she revealed that she believes the world is a horrible mean place and that children should be put in public school so that they learn that and learn how to deal with it because they are going to have to deal for the rest of their lives.  GAH!!!

Can you tell the subject under discussion was homeschooling?  Well, if you couldn't, it was.  I'll explain more about that another time.  Suffice it to say, for now, that I had a wonderful opportunity to see what I'm currently made of and found, much to my pleasure and joy, that I'm made of much better stuff currently than I ever have been.  Praise the Lord for making me new and increasingly like our dear Savior!  I've got SO far to go yet, but the progress seems really wonderful to me right now!

I really should've known this from all too frequent altercations I am involved in with someone who matters much more than this strange little old woman with pink hair who thinks the world is mean ever could be.  But those are so much more heavy-laden by emotion that it's difficult to discern all that I might understand about myself from them.  However, now that I've had this interaction with the little pink haired woman, I can see so much more clearly my personal progress with the other more important relationship.  Praise the Lord for using this mirror to shine light into the otherwise dimmer area!  :)

Additionally, I'm so thankful that even though yesterday's market day was super duper slow, I was still blessed with a sale!  Praise the Lord for blessing me with consistency.