Yesterday, I had to jet to the bakery to grab some bread for Christmas dinner. I had just arrived at the counter where a woman began inquiring about her custom order. The bakers were scurrying around looking for her bread, but to no avail. “We’re so sorry, Ma’am, it looks like your order is not here,” one of the bakers said.
“What? Are you kidding me?” the lady screamed! “YOU have RUINED Christmas! You have RUINED my whole family’s Christmas! I am feeding 20 people! What will I do?”
Her tirade went on and on for minutes, as the bakers searched for some sort of resolve, and as the rest of us stood uncomfortably by. The lady was unrelenting.
Finally, I had to speak up. I had to say something!
“Ma’am these people are working here on Christmas Day. It’s Christmas Day! And, even if it were not, no one deserves this kind of treatment. No one can ruin your Christmas, but you. I can tell you are a smart and crafty person, and you can make any bread work for your special dinner tonight. Take what the bakers have to offer and be blessed you have food on your table, unlike some who do not.”
She took the bread they offered, mumbled a lackluster apology to us all and scurried off. I was tough on her, and probably should’ve bitten my tongue, but I remembered this quote while she was going off about not having the right kind of bread at her table:
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. -Mahatma Gandi
Tonia Allen Gould 