Tangled

"Oh, what tangled webs we weave when first we practice to deceive."   

When my husband and I were newlyweds, we joined a progressive dinner group at our church to get to know more people.  We were assigned to bring dessert to the first gathering.  Since we both worked full-time and I wasn't much of a cook (you can see me building up to justifying something, can't you?), I bought a couple of Mrs. Smith's frozen pies and baked them.  

Upon arriving at the house where the meal was to be eaten, I handed off the pies to the hostess.  "Oh, these look delicious!" she enthused, to which I replied, "Thank you," not realizing that my "thank you" was tantamount in her mind to saying "Yes, I slaved over these for hours."  To me, they clearly looked store-bought, so I didn't give it another thought until after the meal when she brought the pies in and announced, "Lynn made these - don't they look just fantastic?!"  

I know what you're thinking, and you'd be right.  That was my golden opportunity to 'fess up and tell everyone that Mrs. Smith made the pies and I just baked them.  Yes, that was the moment...and I let it go by.  The truth is that I was horribly embarrassed that she'd jumped to that conclusion, and I realized that I should have clarified things at that first compliment.  I'd let a small moment go by and it became a bigger moment, much to my chagrin.  I smiled weakly and figured that was the end of it.  

But no.  The compliments started rolling in one after another, as if I had reached divine perfection with those pies (strawberry rhubarb - who actually makes strawberry rhubarb pies, anyway?  I thought those were solely made in Mrs. Smith's factories).   Have you ever seen the movie "Bob" with Bill Murray? Picture in your mind the scene at the dinner table, in which Bob constantly makes appreciative noises while eating Mrs. Psychiatrist's home cooking.  It was something like that multiplied by about 8 people, the compliments and noises finally coming to a crescendo with one guy's comment, "You could sure give Baker's Square a run for their money!"

By this time, I had stopped eating altogether. The pie tasted of sand and gravel, flavored by my deepening sense of guilt and dismay. Meanwhile, I looked sideways at my husband and saw his look of bemused astonishment. He, at any rate, knew that my hands were not the hands that assembled those pies. It says something very unflattering about my character that I just couldn't make myself own up to the truth in front of everyone, now that I'd let all those small moments go by.  Tangled web, indeed.

By the time we left, I was way past dismay and well into self-incrimination.  I began making inward plans to stand up in the middle of the church service the next day, loudly proclaiming my sin and begging forgiveness of the entire congregation.  Even that didn't seem like enough.  One of the women at the dinner party gave us a ride home and in the car, I finally came clean.  "I didn't make those pies, Muriel!  I bought them!"  I think I expected some form of shock to follow this announcement, but as usual, it turns out that I had a falsely heightened sense of self-importance in the grand scheme of things.  "Oh," she said brightly,"I didn't really make the baked beans, either - I just bought a can and added a few things to it." Case closed.  I could have kissed that woman.

So I didn't make a church-wide confession the next day.  Make no mistake: I did the wrong thing in accepting credit for those pies.  The real end of the story is that I confessed my sin before God and He forgave me.  Some wisdom got added to my account (I'm much more careful not to let those small moments go by) and there have been no more tangled webs for me. I'm cured!

As far as the east is from the west,

So far has He removed our transgressions from us.

Psalm 103:12