Fiancé & Fiancée

     I can't remember how old I was when I first heard the word "fiancé," but I must have been pretty young. The earliest would've been when I was six, because that's when my sister got engaged. Either way, I've known about it for a while. Several years later, I'm sure, though I can't remember exactly when either, I learned that there was a difference between a fiancé and a fiancée, one being a guy, the other being a girl, respectively. I don't really use a trick to remember which is which, but if you want one: the girl has two "e"s like girls have two x chromosomes, because she's (at least in my case) twice as smart and wonderful and attractive as me, because "woman" and "female" are longer than "man" and "male," etc. But those don't come to mind. Don't get me wrong, I tried that, but it never really stuck for some reason. I grew up with siblings getting married, and I knew that there was a difference, but until I got engaged in January, I couldn't have told you with any confidence which was which. "Fiancé" is a boy, "fiancée" is a girl. Easy, right? Now I know that, but it took me forever to figure it out.
     The funny—read "awful"—thing about that is that now I'm as much of a snob about spelling it correctly as I am about the other random English rules I've ranted about on this blog, and I didn't even know about it until I had done this blog for two months! I didn't even realize how quickly I had changed until last week, and it wasn't even a huge revelation; I just saw somebody write "fiancé" when they meant "fiancée," and I was like, "Pfft. Amateurs." Then it dawned on me: I'm a snob. Like, more than usual, and not on something that's always bugged me. I immediately look down on people who haven't learned the things I know at the exact moment I have. I'm a horrible person.
     I keep trying to come up with an example for this, and I'm having difficulty. It's kind of like when a six-year-old says, "When I was little" or "kindergartners are such babies." Adorable, right? Not when you're twenty-one, it's not. It ceases to be cute and starts being annoying. People don't like to be looked down on—for any reason, but especially for not knowing something that you barely have a handle on yourself.
     It's like the parable of the unmerciful servant in Matthew 18 (Yes, I just looked that up. No, I won't judge you if you don't remember where it's found. I'll probably forget, too): a servant owes his master an enormous sum, yet when he is about to be carried off to debtors' prison, he begs for mercy. Kindly, his master forgives him the debt—not just gives him more time, which I always thought happened, but eliminated the debt entirely. The servant cries his thanks and leaves. But soon after he does, he seeks another servant, a man who owes him a mere fraction of what he (servant #1) owed the master. In the same words that servant #1 used before, servant #2 begs him for mercy, only this time, servant #1 refuses to forgive the debt and has the man cast in prison. The other servants tell the master, who chastises the unmerciful servant for his hard heart and sends him to the tormentors until he can pay the debt (which no man can while in prison). Christ tells this parable to Peter, who asks Him how many times he should forgive his brother. A beautifully dramatized version of Christ's telling can be found here.
     It wasn't until last week with the "fiancé" thing that I realized that I do the same thing. Maybe we all do, but that requires personal evaluation, and I'm in no position to tell you what your faults are. But I invite you to think about it and figure out if there's any way in which you unfairly judge others, especially on things you yourself have repented of (and should therefore be even more understanding than most). As personal as I like to be on here, this isn't the right place to confess all of my sins, so I'll just tell you that I can think of many times in which I'm hypocritically judgmental. Being judgmental is never good, but especially when you're guilty of the same crime. Like Christ said, "He who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone" (John 8:7).

     In the words of some favorite hymns, "Who am I to judge another when I walk imperfectly? In the quiet heart is hidden sorrow that the eye can't see. Who am I to judge another? Lord, I would follow thee," and "Because I have been given much, I, too, must give." God has blessed us with many gifts, including immeasurable knowledge. He didn't give us these gifts to make us better than others, but so that we could serve our fellowman. It must be horribly frustrating for God to watch us imperfect people attempting to carry out His perfect work, but He deals with it. What must be unbearable, though, is when He sees our impatience with one another for being imperfect. It's one of those things where He probably laughs so He doesn't cry. But He wants better for us. I love the words of a Christian rock song, "Jesus, friend of sinners, open our eyes to the world at the end of our pointing fingers." May we learn to love each other the way Christ loves us: with patience, compassion, and mercy. He cares much less about how we spell words than He does about how we treat each other.

Okay, I just can't help but put this here: it's a super cheesy 80s or 90s version of the parable of

the unmerciful servant. I grew up watching this, and I still love it in all it's low budget glory!