Sacrilege

It started simply enough, as these matters often do. Mom and I were discussing the latest of a series of disasters in my life.

“It’ll be okay, Honey. Sometimes blessings come in disguise.”
“Sometimes? SOMETIMES? How about ALL. THE. TIME, Mom?”
“What?”
“Every gift God sends me comes in the most atrocious gift wrap imaginable. He’s seriously got the worst gift-wrap department in the history of…of gift-wrap.”
“Stacey!”
“IT’S TRUE! You know it’s true. Look, everything has an opposite, right? Isn’t that what you’ve taught me?”
“Um…”
“Think about it. Satan sends things all wrapped up in pretty packages with shiny bows and you open them and there is NEVER anything good in there. NEVER. Whereas God? He sends us the most fantastic things but most of the time we don’t even realize it because the packaging is AWFUL.”
“STACEY LEE!”
“Am I not right about this?”
“Well…yes, but I just don’t think we should SAY things like that. It sounds sacrilegious."
“Oh, like God doesn’t KNOW me? Trust me, He knows me. He knows what I mean. I don’t mean to be disrespectful, I’m just saying. Great gifts, horrid gift wrap.”
“Well yes, God knows your heart and knows you don’t mean anything by it but…”
“But? Isn’t His opinion the one that matters?”
“We just need to be careful about how we say things.”

I’ll try to remember that in the next life, where I will no doubt be writing to her from Hell.