Lessons of spell check

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am today going to be thankful for spell check.

I live under the illusion (delusion), that I'm a pretty good speller. But it is probably not true.
What has saved me from being exposed to this truth for years is the power of spell check. Auto spell check, that is.
It automatically corrects each time I type "nad" instead of "and, or "teh" instead of "the". True, those are really typos and not spelling mistakes.
But auto spell check has kept me from knowing the truth about myself.

It wasn't until I switched to using Thunderbird as my email client that I realized what auto spell check had been keeping from me. Thunderbird, you see, has a excellent feature of underlining in red those words I misspell, but it does not correct them for me. It tells me it's wrong, but makes me fix my own mistake.
Having done some teaching, I know this to be an excellent way to learn something--fix your own mistake. Ironically, it's even the method for learning spelling I most often recommend.

Because of this feature, I have learned that I consistently spell 'receive' and 'sacrifice' incorrectly.
Every time.
I even had to fix the above typed 'sacrifice'. But (cheer) I got 'receive' correct.

And this week I learned that I have no idea how to spell 'ulterior'. Huh. Who knew it wasn't spelled with an 'A'?

So, yeah, I'm thankful for spell check. For both the automatic and the non-automatic types.
The automatic for the beautifully blissful time-saver that it is, and the non-automatic for helping me learn how to be a better speller.

And because spell check has reminded me of other lessons I learn when a Gentle Hand underlines something in my life and patiently waits for me ask Him how to fix it. Sometimes I've been blind to my mistakes. Other times I've no idea how to get myself out of the mess I'm in.
But no worries, 'cause way more faithful than spell check is my Father's love for me.