Judge not by a person's outward appearance or the words said playing a role..

 Each person that God puts into our lives has a message for us.  For me, my first relationship after my divorce from my childrens' father took me from a caterpillar to a butterfly!  How wonderful to be free and fly totally mesmerized by the world about me!

My first job outside the home taught me a great deal.  I was first to arrive in the mornings and my fingers were stuck to my typewriter, my typing speed increasing each week.  A couple weeks after I started work, I would find a note under my typewriter that said, “Good morning bright eyes".  It always put a smile on my face and no matter how tough life was, those words gave me confidence to keep on learning and growing.  Sometimes, other than a note, there would be a poem.  Naive as I was, I just thought it was someone encouraging the new kid on the block.  Every now and then, a man by the name of Joe would stop by my desk to say good morning and wish me a good day.  The secretary sitting by me could be rather harsh and abrupt and would instruct me on keeping my nose to the grindstone because one of the Senior Vice Presidents checked to make sure everything was moving smoothly in the typing pool.  One morning, she said, “Oops, get going, he’s coming down the aisle.”  I looked up and it was Joe.  As usual he said good morning.    This time, her mouth dropped and she said, “Do you know him?”  I responded yes, said that he was a very nice man,  and dropped the subject.  She glared at me.

After several months, Joe asked me out to dinner after work – my curiosity got the best of me and I said yes. For quite some time, we would meet for dinner at Papa’s Porch.  It was nice to have another adult to talk to and Joe was an Italian from New York and I would get the biggest kick out of listening to him slaughter the English language!  When I left my job and went to another, it freed us to date without worrying about the office gossip.  It was a solid relationship based on honesty and fun.  One day he invited me to lunch and asked me to marry him.  I reluctantly said yes.  There were some differences between the two of us and once we started talking about them, they got even bigger.

I was Lutheran and he was Catholic.  He refused to go to church with me and he was a C & E (Christmas & Easter) Catholic who rarely went to church.  Joe was a liberal and I was a conservative…Joe didn’t see anything wrong with using “pot.”  Since Alcohol had played such a big part in the demise of my first marriage, I drank rarely and did not condone the use of any type of recreational drugs.  There came a day that I knew a marriage between the two of us would be a disaster.  We loved and respected one another but as far as building a life together, the writing was on the wall.  The relationship ended rather abruptly and Joe was hurt and quite angry.

Some years later we connected and had dinner.  I was able to thank him for all the good he did for me and how much I appreciated who he was as a person.  By then, he had grown as well and had realized the dangerous route that recreational drugs can take.  We were both dating different people by then and were happy to have had the opportunity to clear the air.

Personally, I think that all the people that God brings into our lives bring important messages.  All we need to do is listen.  I’ve always been fortunate enough to have friends to talk things over with and have solid moral values.  I had been so beaten down after my first marriage that often times I was afraid of my own shadow.  I had been so sheltered not knowing about men who were not so much on the up and up.

I will always be grateful to Joe for helping me to peck out of my shell and start working on my self-confidence.  I will be grateful for his patience, love and the good he saw in me.

This is the last poem he tucked under my typewriter and I read it often:

“Judge not by a person’s outward appearance or the words said playing a role…

Measure a person by the honesty of their inner spirit and the brightness of their soul.”

~~Unknown Poet

Thanks, Joe, I don't know where you are now but I wish you love and happiness!