Things are not always as they appear.
The whole thing played itself out before my eyes. Her husband did not want her to walk all the way in from the parking lot so he dropped her off at the main entrance. She was a pleasant-looking woman, nicely groomed and conservatively dressed. She was planning to spend the evening strolling the shopping mall on her husband’s arm. It wouldn’t be that simple.
The car paused at the main entrance. She opened the door and stepped out of the car. I watched from the curb. Her husband was carefully checking his driver-side mirror and the blind spot over his left shoulder when he heard the passenger door close. At that precise moment a parking place opened up only a few spaces away. He pulled away quickly. What he didn’t see was that his wife was out of the car but the strap of her purse had caught in the door. He pulled suddenly away before she could get free of the purse and she was jerked around 180 degrees and knocked to her knees.
The car sped forward, her handbag dragging on the ground, and was two or three car lengths away before the startled man realized what happened.
I stepped off the curb to help the woman to her feet but she didn’t see me or need my help and she was not at all interested in exchanging pleasantries with me. She was on a mission. She scrambled to her feet, caught up to the car, jerked open the door, snatched her purse, jumped into the car and immediately turned the air blue with a lethal barrage of profanity that would have made a sailor blush.
I walked to my car well out in the lot and drove back to pick up the family. When I passed behind the couple he was slumped down behind the wheel of his car and she was emptying her last few verbal rounds into his lifeless body.
Eventually what is on the inside comes out and usually it comes out through the mouth. Billy Grahmn said; “A genuine Christian is a person who can loan his parrot the town gossip and not worry.” Jesus said that a person speaks out of the overflow of his heart. An oft-repeated proverb says a contentious woman makes you want to find a lonely corner in which to hide or a wilderness retreat. Her nagging is like continuous dripping. There are three variations of this Proverb in the Proverbs of Solomon. The book of Proverbs happened to have been written to a young man, but it has been my observation that contentious men are no fun either. I like the way Amy Charmichael put it; “A cup brimful of sweet water cannot spill even one drop of bitter, no matter how suddenly jarred.”
