Of dog leashes and life lessons

I stood on my front porch the other day untangling my dog leash. It was tangled and knotted and a big old mess. As I watched cars go by and I untangled and untied and fought and used a few choice words, I realized that it had only taken a few minutes to make this mess and a lot longer to fix it. After I finally got it untangled I looked at it and the knots were out and the tangles were out but there was still tweaks in the rope that were permanent. It dawned on me life is like that. It only takes a second, a couple of wrong words to completely tangle and knot up a relationship, but it takes days, months, and maybe even years to undo the mess, and then even after that, there will be little tweaks that will never go away. We need to choose our words carefully, be slow to jump to conclusions, and quick to say I'm sorry and I was wrong. I hate it when my dog leash is tangled, but I hate it even worse when my life is.