3 minute read
Open Mouth, Insert Foot
Photo: elkor/E+ via Getty Images Plus
When it comes to jumping to conclusions, look—and think—before you leap.
by Joyce Starr Macias
Jumping to a conclusion that turns out to be wrong is not unusual. Especially for me. I’ve been known to do it more often than I like to admit.
Jaw Dropper I remember, for instance, the morning at church when I greeted a trim dark-haired man who was standing next to a gray-haired woman. I wrongly assumed she was his mother.
Reaching out to shake my hand, he said, “It’s very nice to meet you, Joyce.” Fortunately, before I voiced what my mind was thinking, the man added: “And I’d like you to meet my wife, Mary.”
I recovered quickly enough to
keep my jaw from hitting the floor, but the event made a deep impression on me. I’ve tried to be more careful ever since, yet it’s a habit I have trouble breaking.
Oops! I even do it online!
I correspond on Facebook with a rather nice-looking man whom I’ve never met in person. He recently posted a photo of himself next to a handsome red-haired boy.
“Grandson, I assume,” I commented.
Not so, I learned from his answer. Turns out the boy in the photo was his son, not his grandson. Oops!
My social media faux pas and many others over the years made me see myself as one who finds it only too easy to “open mouth, insert foot!”
Compliment Gone Bad Despite my new determination to avoid another such embarrassing mistake, I goofed yet again just a few days later.
I’d been chatting with a young couple in the hardware aisle of a Home Depot about our various do-it-yourself projects. We talked for several minutes, and I couldn’t help noticing that none of their three children got whiny or draped themselves across the shopping cart in frustration. Their patience deserved some praise, I thought. So I gave it.
“Your little girls are so well-behaved. You don’t see that too often these days,” I said.
Nice compliment, right? Wrong. One of the “girls,” the one with the longest hair, was actually a boy.
Fortunately for me, they all laughed about it, with the mom explaining that people frequently mistake her son for a daughter. I was glad to see the boy was laughing, too.
Some Workout! Jumping to a conclusion may not be the most dangerous jump in the world, but it can certainly be the most embarrassing.
The only thing that makes me feel a little better about my too-frequent habit is that I’m not alone. Googling the topic will yield a host of interesting comments.
“Our busy minds are forever jumping to conclusions, manufacturing and interpreting signs that aren’t there,” said the Greek philosopher Epictetus.
Writer and film director Paul
Auster warned that, “It often happens that things are other than what they seem, and you can get into trouble by jumping to conclusions.”
One of my favourites is credited to author J.A. Nance: “My major form of exercise is jumping to conclusions.”
Now that’s a workout I can relate to!
Help Available But wait. There is help. And I found it in the Bible,
“Don’t jump to conclusions—there may be a perfectly good explanation for what you just saw” (Proverbs 25:8 The Message) is just one of many passages dealing with that bad habit.
But of all of them, a psalm written by King David really hit home. One wouldn’t think that a powerful Old Testament king would have to worry about saying the wrong thing! But King David evidently thought it was necessary to watch his words.
Here’s what he wrote: “Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips” (Psalm 141:3).
If someone like King David thought it was necessary to be careful about what he said, then it seems important for me to do the same.
Maybe I’ll never stop jumping to conclusions but, like David, I don’t have to give voice to any of them.
Best of all, divine help is available. I can ask God to guard my mouth and watch over my lips so that none of my jumping to the wrong conclusions go public.
(left) Joyce Starr Macias is a retired newspaper reporter who lives in Apache Junction, Arizona, with her husband, Everett, who is a deacon at their church. As a freelance writer, her stories have been published in numerous Christian magazines and short-story collections.
