My stupid mouth

John Mayer had a song on "Room for Squares" entitled My Stupid Mouth. The pre-chorus in the song said this...

"Mama said, think before speaking
No filter in my head
Oh, whats a boy to do?
I guess he better find one soon."

There was also a funny line on the T.V. show Family Guy where Peter said something rediculous and Brian asked him...

Brian: "Do you actually hear yourself talk?"
Peter: "I drift in and out."

All joking aside, I say some things sometimes that just aren't smart. I think one of my wisened elders pointed that out to me in the most gentle way possible today by saying. "If Jeff has an opinion, you're gonna hear it." That hit me like a ton of bricks. And then tonight, as I was about to drift off to sleep without a care in the world, I read that one of my friends was pretty offended by something I said about them, in a way that I thought was more of a joke, but really hurt him. And must I even bring up the Mary Poppins fiasco? So many times I just blurt out (or type) things wihtout really thinking of the ramafications. Then I usually have a God moment a week, or a day, or an hour later in which I feel Him gently saying, "that's not love." I'm workin on it. I'm making progess for sure. The last five months, I feel, have been a crash course in what not to do. I feel sorry for some of the people at GCC who probably have to say, "Well that's just Jeff, he's a little weird." The people at that church have more patience with me than I've ever seen. And there's people at Bethel, people I've worked with, student taught with, played with, dated, and whatever else that had to dish out an overwhelming amount of patience and understanding to deal with me, not to mention my parents. Maybe it's part of growing up, maybe I just have a unique case of 'foot-in-mouth-itis', but whatever it is please know that I'm working on it, I really am. If anything, it's taught me a lot about being humble and asking for forgiveness when it's needed.

Funny part about the rest of that John Mayer song is that the last part of it really caught me when I was reading the lyrics to quote it for this post...

"One more thing
Why is it my fault?
So maybe I try to hard.
But it's all because of this desire.
I just wanna be liked.
Just wanna be funny.
Looks like the jokes on me
Just call me captain backfire."

As much as I want to be funny, loved, accepted, or whatever, I have to watch what I say and do. 'Just trying to be funny' isn't an excuse for acting like an idiot. I seem to remember somebody saying something about that in the bible. I think his name was Salmon or Solotaire or somethin. Speaking of dumb jokes...