Joyful Defect Removal

Sometimes the sign that I have actually gotten humble enough to ask my Higher Power to remove a shortcoming is that I can laugh about it. ~ Courage to Change, Page 73

Laughing at myself can do me good
(why does my mind insist on “well”
when it’s the truth it does me good
while it serves me well?) when my
aching fingers have clinched tight
to old crutches, limping along to relief,
while I stumbled every darned time
on the slippery slimy rock I thought to be
humiliation. But lo and behold
I came to realize I could call the wrong name
for emotions as surely as I could for people
and that archvillain humiliation crammed himself in
when I sought to discover the paragon humility.
Having thought that thought,
I heard friends through years
commenting on my proclivity to giggle
and knew that I trip over words
like iced-over rocks, that I fall on my head
when I butt up against expectations,
and that I’m just as much a klutz
mentally as I ever have been physically.
I may have at long last grasped
the truth that I’m not as complex
as I’d have you think, that sometimes
I’m just the girl who stood on a neighbor’s porch
twisting a loose tooth, mortified then the thing
actually came out.

barb2nd