Welcome to our series! Find Day 1 here.
I don’t remember the events of the day. They were so insignificant in and of themselves. But after a whole day of minor catastrophes, broken rules and bad behaviors, I had reached my limit. Frustration bubbled right under the surface. By 4:30, when I heard my husband pull in the driveway, I was ready to pop. He opened the door, smiled, and said, “Hey, how was your day?”
It was the wrong thing to say.
The very sight of his face was like an open invitation to release all the negative emotions I’d been harboring all day. In capital letter phrases, I spewed frustration and irritation all over him. There was The Incident at the Grocery Store Which Will NEVER Happen Again and the Diaper Malfunction of Epic Proportion and the Tantrum Heard ‘Round the World. There were No Naps and Potty Training Mishaps and Biting.
Yes, Biting. I paused for a moment so my husband could feel appropriately sorry for me. Also, he needed to hang up his coat.
While I waited, I thought of a few other things I had failed to mention. The very thought of those injustices caused my heart to beat faster. The imprint of anger lingered though the offenses should have been forgotten.
“Maybe we should talk about this later,” my husband said. He didn’t sound at all sorry for me. Exasperated, I turned around. There behind me, listening with eyes wide, were my three oldest children. They had been there the whole time. They were standing right there when I recounted their sins to their daddy, listening to me tattling about their bad behavior and our awful day, listening while I vomited grievances I said I’d forgiven.
No one had to tell me I was wrong. I knew it the minute I saw them. I knew it too late.
Parenting can be downright frustrating. But that gives me no right to air my frustrations to anyone who will listen. It does not give me the right to hold on to anger until my husband gets home and I have a chance to “vent.” It does not give me the right to keep a record of wrongs and apply forgiveness retroactively after I’ve had a chance to update my Facebook status with my current hardships.
Love requires me to treat my kids with more respect that.
“Love keeps no record of wrongs.” How I struggle with that some days! If I don’t keep a record of wrongs, I can’t exact the sympathy I want from my husband who gets to work with adults all day. I can’t earn a friend’s pity, and no one is going to tell me I deserve to indulge myself in a bubble bath unless they know how hard I have it.
“Love believes the best.” It also shows the best. It seeks to build up, not tear down. The things I say about my children or post on Facebook should always be the best things there are to say. In our culture, it only takes a second to post a reproachful comment about your child for hundreds of people to see. It only takes a second to send a tattling text or dial up a friend on the phone so you can vent about the kids you have buckled up in the back seat while you cruise down the carpool lane.
Social media and cell phones were not invented so we can tattle on our kids. It is the equivalent of reciting all their wrongs while they stand there listening just so we can gain some sympathy for ourselves. It is an unequal exchange, and the child always loses.
It all comes down to this: there is never a parenting concern so important it requires me to address it publicly unless I am trying to decide whether or not to take one of them to the ER. Love airs praises in public and addresses concerns in private. Love does not tattle.
Someday, my children will be old enough to read my Facebook history. I want them to feel loved by what they read, not betrayed. Right now, they are old enough to hear what I say about them to Daddy, Nana, and the moms I meet for play dates. Right now, they are listening. What they hear me say about them will tell them whether I am a follower of Christ or a fraud.
What they hear will tell them if I believe what I say or not. If I say I know love but sacrifice their reputations for the temporary consolation of a friend, I do not know love. I say I know forgiveness, but if I harbor far lesser offenses than have been forgiven of me, then I do not know forgiveness at all.
Here I am, a harlot with a wandering heart. Yet I have been bought by the blood of Christ, washed, forgiven, and redeemed. God has every right to boast of His goodness in contrast to my darkness. He has every right to list my offenses in the heavens for all to see. But He does not. He stands before the world and calls me His Bride. His Chosen One. His Beloved. His Child.
My Father delights in me. I think part of that delight comes from the fact that He does not simply forgive my sins; He forgets them. He enjoys me because He chooses to let go of the things that divide us. It is a kind of love that does not tattle. It does not traipse my bad stuff out in public for all the world to see. It does not even rehash it in the living room or at the dinner table. Love allows forgiveness to be the end of the story.
When I tattle on my children and air their offenses in public, I do not feel better. I taste the bitterness of anger. I rekindle my desire for retribution and at least a full pound of flesh. I feel slighted because their little “I’m sorry” is incapable of recognizing how much I’ve been wronged. I cannot delight in my children when I continually cut into the same wound.
Enjoying my children requires me to demonstrate the kind of love and forgiveness I have been shown. If I say I know love, it must be my Father’s kind of love. If I say I know forgiveness, it must be His kind of forgiveness. That is the stuff that binds my heart to theirs and allows me to enjoy them as part of this beautiful redemption.
That is the kind of stuff that is worthy of a Facebook status update.
Love keeps no record of wrongs.
Please join us tomorrow for Day 15: Fear
For further thought
1) In 1 Thessalonians 5:11, Paul encourages us to build each other up. Listen to the words you say to and about your children today. Are they edifying? Do they build up or tear down?
2) May our prayer today echo King David’s in Psalm 19:14: “May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart [and the things I post on Facebook] be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer.” Pray that simple line whenever you feel tempted to tattle on your children today.
3) Activity: Make it your objective to remember the best and funniest things your kids do all day. Write them down (see my Quote Wall for an example), post them on Facebook, and share them with your spouse over the dinner table instead of all the bad things. How does this change your heart for your children? Do you find yourself enjoying them more?
Oh, how I want to argue with you, and tell you that you just don’t know my son…but you DO! 🙂 And you are so dead right and I am so painfully convicted. Now I’m wondering, do I still want to be your friend? 😉 Totally kidding!!! I really needed to hear this, obviously. Thanks for your boldness.
Oh, you never tattle about your son, at least to me. It’s always done with the spirit of wanting what’s best for his heart. Sharing with a friend in private, knowing that friend WILL pray for you and your son, is one of the things we CAN do that helps I love you!
It is disheartening that the advice/learning experience in this blog isn’t just plain common sense for a believer. It’s embarrassing. Churches and mothers are failing to teach common sense.
“No temptation has seized you except that which is common to man.” It’s the common stuff I struggle with, the daily sins, not the extraordinary sins. It is the common sense I forget and need to be reminded of. I don’t think my blog series is indicative of a failure in the church, it speaks of a failure in humanity. But then, we are fallen, aren’t we? We are in need of a Savior, we are in need of daily bread and daily cleansing and daily help from the Holy Spirit. Daily and common is kind of what I do because that is what I need.
This was a beautiful post and very convicting. Some days the first thing I do when Daddy walks in the door is vent. I am ashamed to say that I never thought about how when I say that my children are forgiven, it needs to end then (unless it is a big problem that I need hubby for). What if I was forgiven the way that I forgive? I would be in trouble.
Thanks for making us think!
Thank you for being so honest in your comment. I think it’s something most women struggle with because we are both so verbal and so relational. We often solve problems or dissolve emotional baggage by talking about it, and it’s hard to put boundaries on our words when we are so frustrated or tired. Make it a goal to speak good things about your children in front of them, and then address the bigger concerns to your husband in private (if you can get any privacy, haha). You have already done the hardest thing by recognizing something that needs to change! May God give you grace as you do it!
I babysit my granddaughter 1 1/2 years old sometimes and I can’t wait to recount the day’s events to her parents when they come home from work. I watch her little face, she watches and knows I am speaking about her! So I try to say all the good things that happened that day.
I’m an old lady now; still a wife, mom, gran’ma, & great-gran’ma and God’s still faithfully working on/in me. My mom said so many negative things to me and about me. I didn’t realize how it was affecting me at the time. Many years later I had to confront it all, deal with the results in my own image of myself, and how it affected my relationships. Finally I came to understand my mom and forgive her. I know she didn’t conciously set out to hurt me; she never said, “I’m going to do all I can to put her down”. And I know she loved me. She lacked wisdom and did it out of ignorance. I know I did things in raising my kids that weren’t wise. I so often “wish” I could go back and do it all differently. To sum up we are having an affect on our children either for positive or negative. It’s good to remember, though, that we’re not going to do it perfectly and not be too hard on ourselves. We need to be desirous of a moment by moment walk in fellowship with the Lord by faith. “Practice the Presence of God.” I appreciate and applaud you in what you’re doing here.
Well said! I needed to be reminded of this. I’m so thankful that Jesus isn’t up there complaining to God about all the mistakes I make, and I certainly don’t want to do that to my precious children, my gifts from God!
Oh man, me too. It always amazes me that Jesus comes to God as a sympathetic high priest, despite all I have said and done against Him. Without that, I could not stand. Praise God for mercy and grace.
This story touched a spot in my heart. I know if we as mother spent all our time drewlling on all the bad things that our kids do wrong then what and how do they feel. And i know some days are not as good as good as others but just try to fix what is wrong and make the best of it. being postivite about your kids is such a great thing. I love to share what my kids do or say that is so cute. Those are moments that we only have once so make the best of them. I know i dont know how many times i waited for thier dad to get home so i could tell him all my problems but that didnt do any good he was too tired especially after working for your uncle Dan! LOL!!! Kristen u are so amazing i love to read your articles. Keep up your great work your book is going to be so good i hope i can buy it!!
Misty, anyone who has to put up with my family deserves a free book. 🙂
Thank you so much for this heart touching post. I need to focus more on the wonderful and funny things my kids do and share those to make others think more of God’s kindness to our family. I appreciate the way you apply Truth to our every day lives.
Wow. Thank you so much for this post! It brought me to tears. I don’t usually air my “bad days” on FB…and usually don’t attach names if I do. But, recently, have been feeling a bit convicted. I DO record things that I find amusing, and that make me laugh. Often, those are the things most adults consider “cute” when kids do it. I have recently found my 7.5 yr old crying on several occasions because she is embarassed and afraid she will be laughed at for things she does.
You see….she is an absolute, natural klutz. And I mean that in the “she can fall out of a chair when all four legs are on the ground and her rear is in the seat” kinda-way. I absolutely LOVE her for it. Normally, she will just pop back up, say “I’m okay” and not even break stride in whatever she was talking about. It’s not that she has an inner ear problem or anything…it’s just that she is a natural story-teller and, when she is telling a story (or reading one, or thinking about one), she loses focus on her surroundings in the most thorough way. She walks into stuff, trips, doesn’t care if her shoes are untied, etc. All of these things are among those traits I treasure most in her. I adore that she can do it.
But other kids don’t. Her siblings giggle. Her classmates will laugh. When she knocks something into the toilet, or gets a brush stuck or an elastic lost in her mane of curls, she now ends up in tears because she is worried that other kids will laugh at her.
I was thinking on this YESTERDAY and had come to the conclusion that I really needed to make a direct effort to support her in this area. I mean, I knew that she can hear when these “cute” stories are related to others, but I guess I didn’t KNOW how much she was listening and how it effected her view of herself.
Anyway, this post seems perfectly timed and…though it’s a bit different…it seems aimed straight at my heart. Thank you, again.
That’s a tough one because I share the cute/funny things my kids do too. But I rarely share things my oldest does because she is an introvert and prefers to keep her daily cuteness to herself. If I do post anything about the kids, I always read it to them first. They actually LOVE it and beg me to go back and read the funny things they said and did. But I’m always monitoring in case that changes. I realize that our family is becoming very public. One day, they came home from church SHOCKED because their Sunday school teacher knew what they had done the day before, even before they told her. They thought it was cool, but will it always be? It’s something to keep tabs on in this very public world we live in.
I remember your dad talking about how his mom would “tattle” on the kids to his dad and how then his dad would line them all up and deliver spankings. It was so sad because he hated to see his dad come home. This is such an awesome lesson. If you need to talk about a child’s behavior in order to figure out what to do about it, do it when none of the children are around.
It is destructive on so many levels, not the least of which is the fact that negativity is not a strong foundation for marital communication. I don’t want my husband to dread coming home because he has to listen to me complain. I also don’t want my kids to fear their dad or dread his homecoming. And, I don’t want my kids to feel like there’s always “the rest of the story” to wait for. When it’s done, it needs to be done.
very true
So true. I realized this one day as we arrived at the inlaws and I was so frustrated with a redheaded boy, that I shared his sins from the drive over with them. What I witnessed was one individual’s countenance change in the way they received and viewed my child for that entire day’s visit and it wasn’t pleasant. When we do this, we force others to feel what we are feeling and they become frustrated with our children, when they shouldn’t be. It was one of those aha moments for me and I have never repeated it. And the last thing I want to do is humiliate my children in front of others. They could just as easily turn around and humiliate me! It’s wrong on so many levels.
That is exactly it! I have friends who continually post negative interactions with their children and I find myself judging those children based on the perceptions of them I am getting from their parents. What a shame! I want people to WANT to meet my children based on what they hear about them from me, not the other way around. I just posted your comment to the Five in Tow FB page because I think it’s a valuable insight to the damages of tattling on our kids.