Letters from Roscoe – The DI

The DI

Troy’s been asking to hear from Roscoe.  So, here’s one for Troy.

We all make mistakes.

Sometimes they’re little ones.  Sometimes they’re so big that we think they are life-ending.

But we ALL make them.

Sometimes you can have a ‘do over’.  Once after the Men’s Breakfast we were doing the dishes and I had my hands in the dishwater.  I need to let you know though that the problem with scrambled eggs is that after they’ve sat out a while in a glass bowl they turn into concrete.  At least the residue where the eggs touched the glass does anyway.

So I scrub a little extra hard when I get that bowl now because once upon a time, I let it get past me with a ‘leetle beet of egg’ still there.  I handed the bowl off to my dish-washing partner that day, Dick.

Now Dick was in the Marines.  The Corps.  One of the Devil Dogs.  He knows who Chesty Puller is.

Dick has had first-hand experience with those hard-nosed Parris Island Drill Instructors.  He knew exactly what to do when I handed him THE dish.

He rinsed the soap suds off and then just stood there.  He held the offending dish out in front of him and with a finger-tip pointed out the minuscule bit of egg firmly attached to the bowl.  His eyes bored into me.  His head was tilted downwards like a drill instructor.  The eyes just barely visible below the razor sharp brim of the DI hat.

Ok, his eyes were visible through the tops of his bi-focals but they were still intense!

So what did I do?

Well, what do you think?  I said ‘Sorry!” and took the dish back and scrubbed the devil out of it!

And then?  We finished the rest of the dishes.

I had made a mistake.  Dick pointed it out to me.  I made amends as best I could.  Dick forgave me and life moved on.

Little mistakes, big mistakes.  The process is the same.  Stop.  Repent.  Forgive.  And be grateful that we have a Father in Heaven that understands our failures and as long as we truly repent of our sin forgives us every single day.