a rude awakening

Today I opened my door to the rising sun, my legs ready to carry me down to the park, but my plans were soon interrupted (and most violently.)

The very thing that took the sleepy smile from my face was so small, it's laughable now.  A wasp, a wicked yellow jacket bent to ruin my first waking hours...he was just a few inches long, easily crushed with a deft maneuver of a tightly rolled newspaper.  But I did not have a newspaper.

Nor did I even see him coming, me emerging from my house, and he from his - a sand-dollar sized nest hanging from the door frame.  I am convinced the act may have even been premeditated, so swift his nose-dive to where I stood below, so calculating his attack just below my right eyeball.

My first thoughts:  I am now blind.  My eye is gone and only pain is left where it used to sit so nicely in my head.  Cue obscenities.

My next, less dramatic thoughts:  "How rude!"  And I do feel it was quite inconsiderate.  After all, I had noticed his nest before, but having heard that wasps are the natural predators of other annoying insects, I left it well alone.  I resolved to live in my house and let he and his friends live in theirs.  It was very progressive of me.  Despite my compassion and open-mindedness, that little stinker still stung me.

And that's when it hit me.  Sometimes I am sweet as can be, and I still get stung.  I might sow kind words, good deeds, positive thoughts but reap a rude gesture from a stranger, a painful wound from a friend, or a harsh "no" to a simple request.  I don't always get what I deserve.  Thank goodness for that, because it goes both ways.  Most often if I look hard enough, it turns out I'm usually the yellow jacket...stinging when I shouldn't, becoming aggressive and defensive toward people who aren't a threat to me at all.  But I wake up every morning and the sun is still shining and I still have friends who choose to be near me and a family who somehow still claims me (though they are most often my victims).  There is still the life-changing, heart-breaking truth of knowing that even though I'm a wasp, I'm surrounded on all sides by love.  I float in an ocean of it - a deep sea of grace in which my poison is powerless.

I don't know what happened to the yellow jacket who stung me.  If I could talk to him now, I'd tell him that I get it.  I, too, have wounded without reason.  I'd tell him to be thankful that we don't get always get what we want, or what we deserve.  For though we say we want a world of justice, what we both want more than anything, is mercy.