Pinched Fingers
The staff went out for lunch today, and Nicole and the kids came along. As we were leaving the restaurant, my son, Justus was following some people outside, and I yelled after him, "Justus. Hold on, buddy."
He turned and put his hand on the door to wait for me, and the door closed on his little fingers. In a bust of speed normally reserved for NFL defensive backs, I shot to the door to open it, but not before the damage had been done.
He began crying, and not in that whiny "I want more chips" or "I wanted to watch more Elmo" kind of way. His fingers hurt.
If you've ever heard your kid cry in pain, then you know what I'm talking about.
But here's the weird thing. Instantly, I began to blame people. I blamed my friends who went out the door, which caused Justus to want to follow them. I blamed Nicole for asking me to throw away some trash while she got baby Jaelle, because those seconds prevented me from being closer to Justus. I blame Justus for not listening to me (even though he did. He stopped.) Looking at it, of course, I was being completely unreasonable.
I wonder why, when things go wrong, I get so angry? And I wonder why I blame.
Gotta work on that.
posted by David Tieche at 1:52 PM
1 Comments:
Your blog with the videos of my brilliant brother spurred me on to read these others. A thought hit me on this one. While I don't know the nature of your general interaction with anger, I think there's something significant in this instance where your kid was hurt. Keep in mind I'm not speaking with any parental experience, but certainly have a plethora of relationships with little ones in my care at church and work. I think it makes sense that you felt unreasonably angry - aren't we usually unreasonable with our children? We love them without regard for their achievements, we forgive them without calculating the likelihood that the same thing will happen again, we scrimp and save and sacrifice in the hopes of helping them to their full potential - and when they get hurt, we want to move heaven and earth to make it right. Actually, I suppose I'm speaking more from my experience as a daughter here, both of my awesome parents and of my heavenly Father. All this to say - of course you got angry and wanted someone to blame. I think it's a humble, human version of what it means that you're created in the image of God - a Father who gets pretty miffed when His children are in trouble, if I'm reading Psalm 18 correctly.
4:52 PM
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