Misunderstood

I often open my big mouth and say what I am thinking. I have to be honest it gets me in a lot of trouble sometimes. I never really mean to offend people but sometimes I'm just not clear enough I guess. I forget that everyone else lives in a different mind set and they don't always follow my train of thought. The circumstances that have led me here have left me feeling relieved that I was able to fix a relationship but saddened too that I look bad. I know that shouldn't be important but to me character is important and I feel like my character was put up for questioning. Because I wasn't publicly cleared people still may think that I said something awful to another person. My comment was misunderstood, I have no way to get that back nor anyway to clear the air with those who have read the misunderstood take. I always try to tell my kids to be careful what they say because they can't get it back (poor example I am). I don't regret really saying what I did just that it was taken wrongly and it hurt someone who was already being hurt by unkindness. The lesson I seem to be learning over and over is that most major fall outs and problems come from misunderstandings. I am not sure if I will ever learn to be more effective at communication or more clear, but I hope I can learn to not be so quick to be offended by comments but rather listen more and ask more questions and try better to understand the other person. Before going public with anything give someone the opportunity to defend themselves or fix the problem. I think I've wasted too much time in my life being offended or sometimes looking for offense when it's not there. I think most of us have good intentions. So many times I hear my kids having disagreements and as the impartial listener what I find is that they are not listening to one another but are trying so hard to get their point out and make the other hear and see their side that they are not even listening to one another. Sometimes it makes me wonder about the larger things that are effected by not really listening. Do we march into battle ready to defend someone or something because we heard the wrong or partial version of the truth. Or more simply we jumped to the wrong conclusion. The bad thing is once it's out there we can't get it back because there is record of it somewhere even if it's just in someone's mind.