Aggrrr....

How is it that when you hand out a discipline to a child and they not only do not receive it, they make it worse by reacting so badly to the discipline that a new discipline has to be given just for the behaviour of the reaction. I do not get that! I remember when I was a kid and I got in trouble I hated getting the discipline to follow, but when I did, I took it. I knew that it was coming. It was not like our parents had to redefine the rules each day and that each discipline was fresh and new. I knew that if I did "a" I would get "b". It was simple. Yes true, the impending consequence was not always a deterrent before the crime. But it sure was when the disobedient spree was over. I trembled at the thought. We have all had times in our lives where we followed through with something we knew full well we should not and were very conscience of the consequence. I just don't understand when a child knows the consequence and to that child it is appropriate and related and consistent...WHY would that child continue to exacerbate the receiving of the consequence to the level that we have to add to the original consequence with something heftier? I don't get it!!!!! Here's the kicker...It happens nearly every time!
WHY????
Oh, I really wish I knew.
Th toughest part here is that as much as I desire to deal with these moments as often as they are, with patients and a calm spirit...I don't always and find myself angrier than I want to be a troubled not with guilt but with frustration for the following hours, frustrated at the repetitive and ridiculous looping of the moment. I feel like I am in the movie "Ground Hog Day" It is the same over and over again. Yes I know, so goes the life of raising kids..but this is not the same. Can you imagine if you had to tell the same child each and everyday that the stove was hot. No matter what age, or experience the child has had, each day you had to warn, and each and every day the child touched burned and cried in the pain of following through the repeated action. Not talking 18months here...... Can you imagine? That's the kind of thing I am talking about. Like living in a VHS player and someone keeps hitting the rewind button and we have to repeat the same lesson over and over again...for YEARS...Aggrrr

I know this too shall pass...I know that the Lord has a plan an I know that He has all things in control. For this moment I just want to vent and say...Does anyone else have this??? It's a lonely, limited and dry place.

Wow...After reading what I just wrote I turned to my bible and picked it up... It opened on it's own to James 3....."Taming the tongue." Hmmm... The Lord knows doesn't He! I asked to be encouraged and in an instant I was.

It reads ~ (Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check. James 3:1-2)

Oh Lord. Who knew but you, it was humility that I would receive in this moment? Thank You!

Blessings'
Crystal

The Chickens forgot to pray...

There are a few moments in life when as a parent we realize that the things that we are seeking to embed in our children's hearts are in fact taking root. It is so satisfying when it is a polite please when they are asking for something they want from someone else and they don't know that we can hear them or maybe even better when there is an injured sibling or friend or even unfamiliar child that gets hurt and our child runs to their side in comfort and love. Oh how that makes us glow.
But nothing took the cake like a moment on the weekend when Merek was pleasantly requesting the opportunity to feed the chickens at a friends house while we were there for a BBQ and when the gracious father conceded to take him found himself in a funny little moment.
Merek and the dad together went to the coop and took the bucket of watermelon rinds that had been collected from the BBQ guests and proceeded to dump it in for the hungry creatures when Merek exclaimed, " The chickens didn't pray!" The dad looked at Merek and said, "Pardon?" Thinking that he must have not heard him right. It was then as he told this story to us that I too started to have that glow. "The chickens forgot to pray!" said Merek. The dad was so amused by this he promptly came back to us and recounted the scene. It was truly one of those times where a parent thinks, for all the things I feel are not going in, maybe the Lord has a deeper grasp on the hearts of our babies than we can see. The purity of a three year old touched the hearts of a hand full of people in an instant and shed just a little ray of the wonders of God on the whole evening!

Thank you Lord for food for the Chickens...
Crystal