Do you prefer to eat off of paper or glass plates? I think there are advantages to both. Depending on the situation, I really could go with either. Paper plates are so much easier to clean up. My kids would often say, “I’ll get the dishes off the table!” when we ate with paper plates. It was easy to do the dishes that night. I knew what they were doing - Ha! I’m sure I did the same thing growing up.
However, my vivid memories weren’t of eating off of paper, but of eating off of my parents' plates they got as wedding presents. The dishes were simple and white. There were dinner plates, dessert plates, bowls, coffee cups, a vegetable bowl, a gravy boat and a big plate for the turkey or ham on holidays! They were not fancy, but they were perfect and did their job.
At some point I remember, one of the plates got chipped. I am not sure how or what caused the chip, but it was there. This one plate kind of became famous in our household - it was special! On our birthdays, we got the chipped plate. If something amazing happened to us one day, we got the chipped plate! If we had a horrible day, mom would pull out the chipped plate. If we brought a friend for dinner - THEY got the chipped plate. It became a part of the family! My sister and I would say, “I get the chipped plate!” each meal like people call “shotgun!” to get the passenger seat of a car.
So many people would have thrown that plate away once it chipped. It was sharp. I could hurt someone. But my mom saw the usefulness in it and said as long as we were careful with it, we could still use it. So it was flawed a little - but wait, aren’t we all?
What if in life we discounted anyone who we came across who was “flawed?” I would have been thrown out long ago! I’d like to think our mom taught us to look beyond the mistakes, the chips and the flaws in people and look for how useful and wonderful that each individual is - It’s just like the plate. She was teaching us a lesson and none of us even knew it!
Throughout the years pieces of that dishware set have been dropped, passed along, never returned and broken, but that one chipped plate is still in the cabinet. This plate will forever be memorable to me. It makes me smile and reminds me that we are all perfectly chipped, but we are also exceptionally special and useful in so many ways!
Have you ever felt discounted because of a flaw someone else thinks you have? How does that make you feel? Have YOU ever brushed someone off or ignored them because they weren’t “perfect” in your eyes? I challenge you to look for the good in people instead of seeing the bad - we all have different chips and knicks, but that is what makes us special!