A great complement: You're not perfect.

There is a women I have been chatting with while our kids take swim lessons.  Our first conversation sparked when her son called her Mamae and my girls noticed that he speaks Portuguese just like their cousins.  Today I asked Amelia to pick up her sweater off of the floor, but it sounded more like this: "Amelia, Amelia, Amelia, Am-mel-lia, please pick up your sweater off of the floor so that it doesn't get wet."  But I did not say: AMELIA!

She said, "You are so calm and patient." I snickered and told her I wished I could always be calm and patient.  I wasn't even tempted to just say thank you.  I wanted for her to know that I'm not perfect.  I don't have it all together.  As a matter of fact this inspired home school mom just spent and HOUR trying to get her kindergartner to finish a writing page and no amount of bribery or threatening could make it happen any quicker.  Maybe I should have tried yelling ;-)  Clearly my kids are not perfect either.

We talked about parenting for a few minutes and I mentioned MOPS and our mentor moms and what a great example they are for us. Then she said, "Are you Mormon?"  but it sounded more like, "You're not Mormon are you?" I told her that we are not and she said that she is Mormon and all the women she goes to church with act like they are perfect and like nothing ever goes wrong.  They act like messing up or admitting that they don't have it together would be a sin.  And then she said the funniest thing, she said, but you can clearly see that they are not perfect so why the pretense?  I was so flattered that she saw my genuine incompetence as refreshing.  We don't need to be perfect; we serve a perfect God.  

I told her MOPS is for all Mothers of Preschoolers and we have many Mormons, Catholics, Christians and others in our group.  We also talked about James Dobson.  I just happened to have a copy of Bringing Up Girls in my bag.  

Our conversation was so nice, the type that you know isn't fueled by selfish ambition, but rather by the Holy Spirit.  We didn't try to lead her to the truth, we just planted some seeds.  

Dear Jesus, thank you for using me today.  I pray for my friend and our last meeting together on Wednesday. Please let your spirit guide our conversation again and please, Lord, send her another witness so that she'll know it is true. Amen.