I've been thinking......scary I know.....................thinking about parenting. Dr. Phil got me wondering the other day if I would be willing to let someone ....say Dr. Phil ....come into my home and install a video camera (yes, people DO this!!). I'd probably say sure...my life is good, I'm an okay parent, maybe people could learn from me .... (or something stupid like that). Anyway, what if the camera came on randomly recording for several minutes only to shut off and come on again at another random time and so on throughout the day....
I'm getting a picture here of an evening in about 1994....daughter number two sitting on the couch watching TV
with dad and mentioning that her tooth was loose....dad checks, sure enough it's loose, he begins (like he's done this a million times before) talking about the tooth fairy, inflation and how the price of teeth has gone up since the last time she lost a tooth. She looks at him with terror in her little six year old eyes, turns to me and starts yelling at the top of her lungs "Don't let him", "Oh, please, please, please, mommy .....DOOOOONNNNNTTTTT LET HIM HURRRRRRTTTTTT MEEEEEE!", and moves to my side of the room for "protection".Two or three days later she sits wiggling her tooth in front of the TV, dad comes in and she starts to cry, (note he hasn't said a thing or touched her yet), "Daddy, it's not loose yet, it'll hurt, please don't pull it".....Daddy explains that he wouldn't consider pulling a tooth that wasn't ready! In fact he'd never pull a tooth unless it fell out all by itself just tying a string around it ..... "How about it? How about if we just try tying a string around it and see if it falls out?" (Daughter number 2 falls for it, a string is located, tied in a little slip knot and readied for the tiny little tooth)
Daddy heads for the tooth with string in hand but alas the task is not going to be as easy as all that, childs hands fly to face to cover mouth, daddy lunges and gets there first, she begins to cry, he tries to cajole, she starts to kick and scream, he tries in vain to hold her calmly (it's now become a matter of some difficulty, the string is tight, and not long enough to get him out of range of the flailing arms and legs) this goes on for several minutes and finally seeing that nothing "too terrible" has yet happened (other than daddy's bruised shins and spit covered shirt) she calms and he tries to tempt her with all the things she can buy with tooth fairy money,.... new tappy shoes! "I like MY tappy shoes", "How about a bike" .... "I can't ride a bike (silly), I'd fall and hurt myself", "How about some candy"...."Grandpa will bring me some tomorrow"...."Well there must be something you'd like"...."Not if you're going to pull my tooth"...."Sweetie, really it won't hurt, I promise " ...with that he gives the string a little tug and the tooth comes loose, she of course begins to scream (MUCH louder than necesssary I assure you) ...unfortunately the "tug" had a little more force behind it than was necessary (as usual by the time we could get close to a loose tooth in this little girl's mouth it was literally falling out of her head and a new one was coming in behind it)....so when he jerked the string the tooth sailed across the room....... straight into the cold air return for the furnace,.......we never found it.
She had complete hysterics, positive the tooth fairy would never find it there (thank heaven for a tooth fairy with "special powers" who not only found it but left a premium due to the ease of retrieval.....no sneaking around dark bedrooms and feeling around under pillows, thank you so much!).
Just thinking about that episode convinces me that had we had a camera recording the scene and it came on during the time she was pleading with me not to let him hurt her, or the part where he's holding her, kicking and screaming with blood pouring out of her mouth you'd think we were the worst parents in the world....mean, uncaring, cruel.....I don't think I'd want my life looked at in snapshots......the big picture is much more truthful, valuable, worthwhile.
We generally go through life taking things at face value, judging people by the situations we see them in....just little snapshots of life. The 'perfect' family that sits in front of us every week at church, the 'beautiful' woman clean and polished at 8:00 a.m., the 'mean' mom speaking harshly to her toddler at the grocery store, the impatient store clerk (obviously just 'ill-tempered'). If we saw the whole picture I wonder if we wouldn't feel differently toward others ..... if we could see what God sees maybe we'd even feel differently toward ourselves!
Maybe just for today I'll try to be the person my Heavenly Father sees in me, and not the person I think I am, the one full of faults and past mistakes, the one with little patience and big hips, short memory and loose lips. Maybe today I'll be the daughter who is like her Father, happy , loving, giving, kind, tolerant, and good......in spite of my "moments". Yup, today I am SO there!
2 comments:
What a great insight that was. I think I'd do everything better and more compassionately if I would just remember that what i see is just amoment in time. Thanks.
Your story had me laughing! It's certainly easy to take things at face value, and judge in our minds from a moment worth of time ... how much better the world would be if we all remembered that a snapshot doesn't always protray the whole!
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