It was bound to happen. I felt it coming. How could I not avoid it, my tweets aren't protected, afterall...it was my first Twitter fail. What is this "fail" that I speak of? Well it's the first time I flat out embarrassed myself over Twitter for the whole World Wide Web to see.
I am still fairly new to this Twitter game, I think I am going on 5 months of tweeting like nobody's business. I had always kept my tweets to myself. I follow a bunch of celebrities but I could NEVER imagine replying to them!! How...embarassing! Well I got over myself and decided to reply to a "celeb", my first victim? Bethenny Frankel from The Real Housewives of New York. To this day I have never heard back from her but that's okay. I've tweeted a few people here and there, but I've made sure to not become a celebrity stalker...I imagine that might make me look bad, and maybe a little crazy too. So I took this new found Twitter freedom to a whole new level, I actually replied to a "real" person. I know, I know, what was I thinking?!? I don't know what came over me, I just felt like my tweet would be welcomed with open arms and embraced with warm and fuzzy words that could only be expressed in 140 characters. But...I was wrong...so, so wrong! Let me explain.
The night of Tim Tebow's NFL debut, "TimTebow" was of course a streaming topic on Twitter. If you aren't familiar with Twitter, you can just click on a topic that is listed on the side of your homepage and it will take you to a page with a bunch of tweets that mention the name Tim Tebow (and you know I love Tim, so I had to check it out). Well Carmelo Anthony (my second favorite athlete) tweeted "Denver better start Tim Teboe" (yes, it was misspelled) in response to Tebow scoring a touchdown. Well someone replied to Carmelo and said that he better show some respect and spell Tebow's name right. I felt like I not only needed to stick up for Carmelo but Tebow as well (yes I am dumb for thinking that, and yes I've embraced it). I replied to that user and said "Maybe he was tweeting on his phone, we all make mistakes on our phones and misspell things." Well, needless to say, her response was not one that I was expecting. In my head, I thought maybe I could make a friend on Twitter that lives on the other side of the country and we can tweet back and forth and live happily ever after. Nope. She was mean...and evil...and ruthless. I can't remember her exact response but it was something along the lines of "Did you actually reply to my tweet? You need to get out more if that is what you do for fun."
Oh no she didn't!! I was
pissed (yes I said pissed, sorry Grandma) and it didn't stop there. I wanted to Twitter fight this fool, someone hold my weave because I am ready to throw down! (I don't have a weave, but I want one for the sole purpose of ever being in a fight and being able to actually say that!! It would be awesome!) I wanted to make her feel dumb with all my smart words, I wanted to make her cry. How could she be so mean? I was just trying to be friendly. I wanted to be rude right back to her. Of course, God chimes in and says: "Love her". Ummmm, really??? It's Twitter, I will never see her face to face, I can just be mean and she will never meet me, it's ok trust me. But I still kept hearing that little voice that said: "Love her." But I don't want to love her, in fact I really would like nothing more than to scream at her right now but I couldn't shake those two words,
love her. I didn't reply right away, I was hoping that I could just blow it off and not even deal with it. We do that sometimes as Christians, blow things off just so we don't have to do
EXACTLY what God would like us to do. Technically I would not be doing anything bad because I wouldn't be saying anything mean, but that still wouldn't be showing her love either. I felt that God wanted me to reply with caring and compassionate words to show her that you may be mad at me, but that doesn't mean I will be mad at you too. Dang, it was hard. So I waited a bit and then I replied, I told her that I was sorry that she felt that way and I was just trying to be friendly. Once again her response was rude and once again I wanted to bite her head off but God said: Love her. Our tweets went back and forth for awhile. She was mean and I was nice (actually God was nice, if it were up to me, I'd be evil...pure evil). Our conversation eventually ended well, we aren't Twitter BFFs but we aren't talking smack to each other either.
I think it's funny the different ways God teaches us to love others. Something as little as a Twitter brawl hopefully planted a seed in this girl's life to show her that people who love Jesus will love you too. I don't need a pat on the back, or a comment full of praises for being the bigger person because it wasn't my choice. Like I said if it was up to me, we would have battled, fought to the death...or just pulled each others hair. God works through us to show others His love. He was the one with kind words, He showed the patience, He is the potter and I am just His clay. It's amazing how much we can learn about ourselves and about God through just one little Twitter #fail.
