Real Raggin' Wednesday

Staci has this idea for Real Raggin' Wednesday. Here's the idea straight from her:

Heres the deal. On Wednesdays you can rag on whomever or whatever you please.......go on rag on sistas........But here's the catch or the rules per say:
1. ONLY ON WEDNESDAYS this gives us an entire week to stew over the things in which we rag thus creating rule number two.
2. Never under ANY circumstances may you rag on this person or object again
3. You absolutely then must offer or extend forgiveness to this person and or object (i can totally picture steph forgiving her laundry "laundry I forgive you for being the mountain you are" lol
4. If you do not believe you could ever forgive this person....or object then you simply cannot participate or the blog monster will hunt you down.....okay so there is no such thing as a blog monster but there should be :)
5. And Finally, you must be REAL, you don't have to reveal the person or object in which your raggin, but you cant hold back....let it out, carefully....i don't want to be held responsible for someone getting the tar beat outta them :)

So - with all those rules laid out, here I go... look out, this one's been burning me for a while

Because of my impending divorce and a house that won't sell and an unemployed ex-husband, I'm struggling financially... badly... REALLY badly. Badly enough that I had to suck it up and take my girls and I down to Social Services and sign up for food stamps. I hated EVERY SINGLE MINUTE of it. I was embarrassed and ashamed and just... I hated it. But I need to feed my girls... so it had to be done.

So the other day I was on a blog (I don't think it was anyone in this circle of bloggers) and the woman was ranting about someone in the grocery store line checking out with her items and one of the items was a pack of gum, and she had the NERVE to pay for that with her food stamps. She went on and on and her commenters went on and on about how horrible that was, and that that was what the whole problem with the welfare system is and on and on.

And quite honestly, a few years ago I might have joined in - perhaps not quite so vehemently, but I would have at least been nodding my head.

But let me tell you a possibility. MAYBE the lady was just like me. Maybe she had two daughters that she LOVED SO MUCH, and maybe she was SO TIRED of having to say "no, we can't afford that" to everything her daughters asked for. And I bet they weren't greedy girls, just normal kids who would like a new toy now and then. But she just didn't have the money to do it. And maybe her girls think gum is a pretty freaking cool treat. And maybe she saw that gum, and thought "Oh WOW! I can finally get them one thing... I can say yes to something. They are going to be SO EXCITED." And so she bought the $1.19 pack of gum, with her foodstamps.

Maybe.. just maybe... we have NO right to judge ANYONE because we NEVER know the whole story, do we?