Being a woman with distinct OCD tendencies, I like doing things in prescribed ways.  Nowhere is this more evident than in my showering routine.  I have several large, white, very absorbent bath towels that I use for drying my body after a shower.  I also have two smaller, well-worn, white bath towels that I use exclusively for wrapping around my wet hair.  Since these towels are used only for covering clean, freshly washed hair, I use them several times before washing them, and I hang them on a specific rack in the bathroom for easy access after a shampoo.  These old towels are too worn and too small to be much good for use as bath towels, and I have asked my husband not to use them for such.  They are designated hair towels.

One morning I found one of these damp hair towels in the bathroom, hanging on a rack where I never hang them.  “Uh-huh,” I thought.  “Dan has once again used one of my hair towels as a bath towel even though I have asked him more than once not to do that.”

I took the towel off its unassigned rack and confronted Dan with it.  “Haven’t I asked you not to use these towels?  Don’t you know they’re my hair towels and are not to be used for anything else?”  He looked up from whatever he was doing and said, “I didn’t use that towel.  I found it lying on our bed, wet, so I hung it up in the bathroom.”

Oh.  Well.  Hmmm.  “Okay,” I said.  Truly, I had left my wet hair towel on our bed, on his side, no doubt.  He had found it there, and without chastising me or complaining, had merely hung it up for me in the bathroom.

I hope I learned something from this little episode with my hair towel.  In any given situation, I rarely have all the facts.  I need to be a little more charitable in my estimation of others.  I am called to extend grace, not hand out judgments.  Could it be that I am too insistent upon the rest of the world doing things my way?