Love. NOW!

March 17, 2010
Now, I haven’t been “parenting” very long, but it’s been one of those trial by fire experiences. I’ve had all the “He hit me!” “Because she’s teasing me!” episodes along with the frantic, “Sister, I need a ruler, compass, blue pen, black pen, and the most hard to find pen nip. BEFORE we go to school in 5 minutes!” Or the, “I washed his shirt accidentally and now he’s wearing it and he didn’t wash mine so I don’t have anything to wear to school because that one smells!” My typical response has become one that my mom used to use with us quite often, “Is this a problem you want me to solve?!” I don’t think they quite understand the question, but their momentary pause in the complaint is worth the misunderstood question.

However, I have the occasional serious episode, which usually involves one of the younger children crying because one of the older ones was beating them or yelling at them. Well, we hit a climatic point the other day, as I found one of the younger boys with full out gut wrenching sobs echoing in the kids dining room, sitting alone. I knelt down next to him, trying to get him calmed down enough for me to understand what had happened. In a halting, hiccup filled statement he explained that the older boys were beating him and scolding him and always treat the younger boys as servants and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Now, you might think that he was overreacting, and he probably was to some extent, but I’ve had several discussions with the older boys about NOT disciplining the younger boys as they are not parents. Since this wasn’t the first instance where I’d heard of or seen the older boys overstepping their bounds with the younger ones, I took them inside the dining hall, sat them down, and lit into them. We went through all the ways they are to LOVE their younger brothers, not beat them and treat them as slaves. When I finished, I had two remorseful, sullen boys on my hands, just in time for devotionals.

I mulled over the incident during the songs, and I decided to deviate from our “next” passage and we went through 1 Corinthians 13 instead for our Bible study. We talked about how if Jesus had seen a child crying, He would have scooped him up on His lap and hugged him and let His love fill the child’s bones. I understand that they’re kids and they’ll fight and cry and all, but we had gone too far. So, after we finished reading, I gave each of them a sheet of paper and they had to write their name on the top. Then we proceeded to pass the papers around the table, writing one thing we loved about whomever’s paper we currently had. They were required to write on every single person’s paper, and it took some of them awhile. To make it interesting, they weren’t allowed to write the same thing twice! We had the typical “I love you because you are funny” but we also had the more serious “I love you because when I’m sad you listen and help me feel better.” By then end, everyone was smiling and I’m praying they realized that there’s something to love in every one of their brothers and sisters.

When everyone had written on everyone else’s paper, I collected them (so I could write on them later that night; as mediator making sure everyone was playing fair, I didn’t have time to then!) to their dismay. I promised to return them the next morning, and then headed off to write my notes to them. The next morning, I handed them back out after breakfast, and you would have thought I had given them gold as excited as they were (and I guess in some ways I did give them a piece of gold...)! All 14 wandered around outside, reading, laughing, and commenting on why their “siblings” loved them. I know they’re not going to change overnight, but the love in that moment was worth the hours work the night before! I think it got them thinking about how there’s something to love in every one of us, because God’s created each of us! We can’t always see what God’s plans are for each of us or even how He’s working in our hearts, but with faith we know that “now we see as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face...” (1 Cor 13). And I saw a lot more love yesterday than I had in awhile!