Looking for the "silver lining"

Can you have a "Mulligan" on a day like today?

I had a not-so-nice day today, and I'm venting on my blog/journal here. I woke up a little later than usual, so I was rushing off to work, and as I was driving into town, I had a cop pull up behind me at a stop light. I wasn't aware that I had been speeding, but I started glancing nervously in my mirror. When the light turned green, the cop flipped on his lights, and I was toast. So I signalled, and moved over to the side of the road . . . but the cop went past me, and pulled over the car in front of me. I let out a HUGE sigh of relief, but then realized that I was going to be pretty late to work if I didn't hurry up a little. I guess being ten minutes late to work isn't as bad as getting a speeding ticket AND being more late to work. Tender mercies.

BUT WAIT!

I had a situation at work with an EXTREMELY sensitive family. The two kids who live at The Branbury are the kind of people that just cry at the smallest thing. And Mom got involved. She thought that I had made her kids cry by being mean to them. And she decided to send an email to the owner of the Branbury. No joke. So I spent a chunk of time trying to get that craziness settled. By the time it was done, I just wanted to quit right then. I am very professional when I do my job, and to have someone who wasn't even involved in the situation come out with fists swinging, I get a little upset.

BUT WAIT!

On my way home to get a little bit of rest before the RA meeting tonight, I rear-ended a van. She needed to get over quickly, and decided to slam on her brakes when she couldn't get right over. I slammed on my brakes so hard that there were columns of smoke coming from my tires. Yeah. Her van had no real damage to it, and my car only came away with scratches on the front end, but I got a pretty good jolt and my neck and back hurt. Nice.
I think the woman might have been an illegal, because when I went over to the van to make sure everyone was ok, she wanted to drive off right then. She didn't understand English at all, and when I asked her to look at the damage, she got out of her car for two seconds, but when it didn't look all that bad, she just went to get in her car again. I suggested we call the police, and she just shook her head "no" and drove off. Weird. Once again, though, tender mercies for it not being worse than it was. And for the lady not wanting to call the police! :)

BUT WAIT!

I had to oversee a very hard meeting tonight. I had to chastise the RA's and have a "come to Jesus meeting" to remind them about what their duties are and how they need to pick up their performances. Not my favorite thing in the world. For the most part, I think people took it all right, and the tender mercy was that I was able to get my message across in a tactful, yet firm way. At least I hope I was able to! There weren't any tears, mean looks, or snide comments, so I think the mission was accomplished.

Tender mercies involved in 3 of 4 situations, maybe this day wasn't as bad as I originally thought. I'm off to pray and thank God that things weren't worse!