Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye but do not notice the log in your own eye?—Matthew 7:3 (NRSV)

Somehow these marital matters always seem to come up in the kitchen. I’ll be loading the dishwasher and notice how my wife, Carol, has put the glasses on the wrong side. Or the soup bowls in a spot where they take up too much room. And why is the strainer there? Or I’ll be putting away a pot and discover that the lid has been shelved in the wrong place. Why doesn’t she remember that? I ask myself. It was her idea in the first place.

She’s usually not in the kitchen when these moments occur, so I simply stew about them on my own. And if she were in the kitchen, wouldn’t it be enough for her to see me rearranging things, with a few poignant sighs?

Just the other day, though, she and I were both there and she started rearranging spoons in the utensil drawer. Maybe she’s getting it now. I looked over her shoulder and noticed that some of the salad forks were with the dinner forks and the dinner forks with the salad forks. How on earth did that happen? Who unloaded the dishwasher last time?

Me. I did it. Wrong. Completely wrong. “I’m sorry,” I said. “That was me. I got them mixed up.”

“I know,” she said. That was it.

When it comes to forgiveness, it’s not necessarily the big things that trip me up. It’s the little things. The specks. Note to self: before you start complaining about somebody else, check on yourself first.