Grace Upon Grace

Josie got to choose a reward for sleeping in her own bed.  She chose fairy wings, wand, and tiara set from the $1Tree, one for Joy and one for herself.

I took her to pick the items out and she was so excited. She had told Joy that she was getting her a surprise but not what it was.  When we got home, she proudly presented Joy her fairy gear and they played for quite a while.
 That evening, Josie wanted to play again, but Joy was doing something else.  Josie was angry about this and then when Joy also did some other minor offense (sitting where she had been sitting for the previous 20+ minutes...) Josie yelled and shouted, and finally, hit her. Hard. With the plastic fairy wand.  Screams and cries abounded from both parties.   I comforted the wounded and confronted the attacker.  The immediate consequence of course was that the wand went to time out and Josie went to time in.

In an effort to get away from me, Josie pleaded “potty” and I let her go.  I stood outside and listened to her wail and rail against me, life, and the universe in general.  When she was finished and came out,  I opened my arms, thinking that perhaps she was ready to hug and talk. Instead she had a “look” and rushed past me to hide.
I went into the bathroom and saw that she had unrolled and put into the toilet, an entire roll of TP.   I went to her and told her that she was allowed to be angry, but not allowed to hit and not allowed to be destructive.  I asked her who she thought was going to clean that out?  “Not me” she said.  Wrong answer.   I told her it would indeed be her.  That she was going to put on gloves and get it out.
“I don't have gloves”, she protested...my reply,   “Guess what?  I do!”

So she followed me as I went to the guest room closet and got the plastic gloves.  I pulled out two for her and then pulled out two more.  “You are going to help me?”  her voice was both surprised and hopeful.   “Of course I'm going to help you. I love you. You are my kid.”

We went back into the bathroom, I put the giant glove on her tiny hand and had her pull out a token amount of the toilet paper.  I of course finished the job and we got the toilet to where it could safely flush.

As we washed up and went out, she was much quieter, but not completely over it all.  You could almost see the anger stir back up in her.  “Well, I'm NOT going to say sorry!”

“I don't want you to say 'sorry', why would I want you to lie?”

Then she started to cry-an angry cry.  “If I say I'm sorry, then I'll be lying and then I'll be in MORE trouble!  My wand is going to be in time out forever!!    And anyway (crying in earnest now) I'm HUNGRY!”

Oops, my bad... I realized that with the way the evening had gone, everyone off in different directions, she had not had a good dinner.  I stood up and told her that I would help her get some food, found some leftovers and quickly heated them up.  When she sat down to eat, I sat with her.
She again protested that she still wasn't sorry, almost trying to convince herself at this point.
I told her she would be sorry later, that when we hurt people we love, we are always sorry later.
She again began to list all the ways that Joy had offended her: she wouldn't play, she sat where Josie wanted to be, and now it was Joy's fault that she had lost her fairy wand.

I listened and simply told her again that we don't hurt people.  We use words, we can say, “I'm upset that you don't want to play with me!”   She assured me, “ Oh, I did. I yelled at her and told her I was MAD... and she still didn't play!”  (hmm... you think?)
Again, she went through her entire list of reasons why she had hit her sister and I simply kept saying, “We don't hit people.  We don't hurt people.”

“Well I'm not sorry!!”  half-hearted crying between bites.

“You will be later, and then you can tell her you are sorry and you love her.”

“But I HATE saying sorry!”

Ahh... now to the heart of the matter.

Oh yes my dear, don't we all?   So much easier to convince ourselves that the other person deserved it and we were not wrong.

Then the negotiations.   “I won't say sorry...I will just see if she wants to be friends again.”

I reminded her that when she feels hurt, she is pretty insistent on an apology...We have all been recipients of her demand to, ”Say you're sorry!!”

“What if she doesn't forgive me?”

“Joy loves you SO much, she does everything for you, she will forgive you.”

“But what if she doesn't?”

“She will.  Remember when you forgave me?”  I reminded her of a recent time when I had apologized to her for something.  “She really, really, loves you.  We want to forgive people we love.  I bet she is waiting right now to forgive you.   Why don't you go say, 'I'm sorry, I should not have hit you. Will you be friends?  Do you want to share some cake?”

Tears again... but different tears.  “Oh, I can't think about eating cake with her after what I did!”

One more assurance that she would be forgiven and the cake gladly shared.

“Will you  come with me?”

“I didn't help you hit her, I'm not going to apologize for you.”

“Just walk up there with me. You will stay outside the door.”

So of course I did.
I walked upstairs with her and in she went.  She did shut the door so I do not know what she said.
A moment later the door burst open, “She forgives me!”
Door shut again.
Open again with an excited, “She wants to be friends again!!”
Door shut.
Open again, “and she want to have cake with me, and she let me hug her!”
Eyes still wet with tears but shining  brightly with the joy of being forgiven and accepted by her loved one.

I headed back downstairs and she came with me to get the cake ready.  “Joy will be here in a minute”,  she told me.

Joy joined a minute later and they sat close together, shared their cake, and then began to play.

Joy spied her fairy gear on the couch and said, “let's play fairies!”
“Ok!” exclaimed Josie... and then her face and voice fell. “but I can't, ...I don't have a wand.”

And then, grace upon grace. ”That's ok, you can use mine.  You will be queen fairy and I'm a baby fairy that hasn't earned her wand yet.”

*
This whole exchange took well over 30 minutes. Some would say that Josie should have been spanked or punished harshly and be done with it.   Some would say that she should have been hit with the same stick she hit with. I disagree of course, but am not going to argue that point right now.

I did hit her... hit her with grace, with mercy.  The changes that occurred in her spirit when she realized that I was going to help her fix the mess she made in her rebellion...these were the beginning of repentance.  She absolutely knows that wasting toilet paper is not ok. She absolutely knows that clogging the toilet is Bad.  She did this on purpose. 

But well beyond my grace of a parent seeing a teachable moment and grabbing it, was the grace of the sister she had struck: open arms with love, with forgiveness, with, “here, take my wand.”

There will be future offenses, many of them.  Josie has all the self-control of a typical four year old, which is to say, very little. But the lessons learned tonight are invaluable, foundational. Grace has a way of softening hearts that mere punishment can never even approach. She had it reinforced that mommy is here to help her when she makes poor decisions, and more than that, she experienced the utter peace and relief of being forgiven, being loved, and of being welcomed back into relationship.





Parenting notes:
-Comfort the child who was hurt first.
-Put the object in time out as a consequence and to get it out of  the situation. This is not about an object, it is about attitude.
-Validate/ help her name and recognize her feelings; “you were angry because Joy didn't want to play.”  Josie had chosen as part of her own reward to give a gift to Joy, and then Joy didn't want  to play.  Doesn't matter that she had played with her for a long time earlier in the day and it was 10 hours later, Josie felt rejected.
-Don't force an apology, no use making a kid lie about it.
-When she was ready, I helped her by modeling an apology she could use.
-This did not come into play on this occasion, but I also don't force forgiveness or words of forgiveness.
-She had to “own” her mess in the toilet and correct it, but was not punished separately for it. Of course we talked about it, “You were angry with me, so you chose to do something that you know upsets me.”
She did apologize for that later.  Even more importantly,  several days after the incident, she came up t me and said, “You love me even when I do bad things.  You get mad, but you are still happy that I'm your little girl.”   She had obviously been chewing on that for a while.
-I realized that part of this was my fault, she was legitimately hangry and it was late at night. She was kind of set up for failure/over-reaction.
- I did not give her wand back just because she had reached true repentance. Consequence is consequence, the wand remained in time out until the next day, just as I had originally said.
- I did not prevent Joy from sharing  her own wand and require that Josie remain wand-less  The wand was Joy's to give and the lesson there... oh I would never want to stifle that lesson! 

Unmerited Favor

Unmerited Favor is one of those "church" terms that sounds fancy but I don't know that I've ever really, truly, understood it.
Extravagant Grace is the title of a book I own (great book, little short devotional chapters from a variety of authors) but I have to say that other than a book title, it's not a concept I've really grasped.
Limitless Love, Boundless Gifts, etc, etc, all terms that we have used or heard used to describe God's feeling towards us, but for me personally, not something I've really ever had a good picture of, not something that I've experienced and thought, "ah ha, THIS is what it means.."  I mean of course I understand that while I was yet a sinner Christ died for me, etc, but to really own it... not really.

Until recently.

Have you ever been the recipient of a gift that you did nothing to earn or deserve?  Not something you could do for yourself?   Not something you will ever be in a position to repay?   Probably the closest I've ever come to this is the unconditional love I have for my children, but even that... yes, it is beautiful and a wonderful picture of God's love for us, etc. but it almost seems like it's cheating... it's built in, it is automatic, almost as though I can't help but love my children that deeply.  I didn't chose it, it just IS.

What I'm talking about is different.  Being offered a gift so ... extravagant, for lack of better word, being offered love that is so undeserved that it almost makes me feel odd to accept it, but knowing that to not accept it would be so incredibly foolish.  To know that if I take this gift, I can never repay it, never give the other party anything like it in return.  To know that nothing I've done, no service I've offered or friendship extended makes me "worthy" or deserving.  It's just there.  Given freely, no bond of blood or maternity, and all I have to do is say yes. If I say no, it is gone,  I can't do this for myself. The only way to benefit from this is to put aside my idea of needing to earn it, deserve it, or pay it back in some fashion, and simply accept it.

It is a humbling, almost scary thing to consider.

I know, you want to know what this gift is.  But that is not the purpose here, you see, what for me is The Gift that Makes the Gospel  Real, may be for you utterly commonplace.  The point is that for me, this is my need, my one thing that I utterly lack the power to do on my own. And someone else is doing it for me, freely.

To accept a gift that comes with no strings, no expectations, no preconceived notions, no way of earning or deserving, no way to merit this, no way to give it back, knowing that any feeble attempts to earn or pay it back will be futile; this is a difficult thing.

And yet I do accept. I take this free-fall into accepting a gift of love that is so big that it is almost overwhelming.  And as I accept, I feel like I'm seeing one of the most clear pictures of God's grace that I've ever seen.  I feel like I need to sit down and process this.  It is causing me to really look at my relationship with God.  Do I accept his gift of salvation for what it truly is, or am I still in some feeble way fooling myself into thinking that I can serve him enough to pay it back?  Am I as humbled and overwhelmed by the truth of the Gospel as I am about this gift from my human friends?
Lord, search my heart, know me.  And Thank You for loving me enough to not only give me salvation but to give me friends who serve me both physically and spiritually.

I'm getting it.
The unimaginable, unmerited grace of the Gospel, made real and brought home.
I'm overwhelmed.

Grace, Mercy, and Forgiveness

I learn from my kids every day, sometimes deep and wonderful things, sometimes things that are a bit unsettling.

Recently I've had the kids give me such a good lesson in mercy that I want to share it.  This actually happened twice with different children involved, within the past few weeks. I'll relate one instance for you.

Jonny has a beloved toy, a metal Elmo lunchbox.  He frequently has it packed full of any number of treasures and totes it around.  On the day in question, he was actually using as a lunchbox and had, among other items, a large apple.  All things combined gave the box a bit of heft.  Which was all just fine until he, for some reason, swung it at Joy's head and connected.  She got a pretty good whomp on the had and was crying a bit. As part of his consequence, I took away his Elmo lunchbox.  Soon his cries joined hers.  A few minutes later, two teary children appeared in my doorway, her arms around her attacker, Joy interceded for leniency on his behalf.  "Please Mommy, don't take his lunchbox for a whole day, He loves his Elmo."  I replied, "Joy, he hit you with it, on purpose, and hurt you. Of course I have to punish him for that."   "I know mommy," she said, "but he's sorry, I'm sure he is."

Wow.  Instead of demanding justice and the fullest extent of the law brought down on the head of the one who had hurt her, Joy was shining a lesson in grace and forgiveness to me.  On her behalf, I did decide to extend mercy to the offender and gave him his Elmo Lunchbox back after a 20 minute "time-out" rather than the overnight I had planned on. 

Of all people, I know that justice is necessary and in fact, I'm quite fond of it.  I am very weak in the area of grace and often find it hard to give grace to others; I'm a no-nonsense, not-longsuffering-for-foolishness kind of person.  

There have been a few instances recently that have hurt my heart as I witnessed them, strident justice, untempered with Godly grace and mercy, laid upon people who admittedly did wrong.  It is hard to understand how we as Christians who have been the recipients of boundless grace and mercy, can so easily forget how much we have been forgiven and be so eager to bring down justice on the heads of those who offend us. 

Again, I'm not advocating that we NEVER seek justice, but I wonder if we have so thoroughly convinced ourselves that "God is a God of justice, sin must be stopped!" that we have forgotten that Jesus repeatedly told us not to be surprised if people hate us and do wrong to us, that he told us to turn the other cheek and give our cloak.  

Looking at the scenes that played out between my children, I think I understand why a little better.  It's not because we as Christ-followers are supposed to be mealy-mouthed door mats, no.

It is because there is nothing like the experience of having someone whom you offended/hurt turn and intercede on your behalf, to bring a small ray of understanding of exactly what Jesus did for us to the lost heart of someone who has not yet understood mercy and grace.  Perhaps our mercy and grace and forgiveness is meant to be an object lesson that will pierce the heart of our offender. 

What if mercy and grace were our first reaction rather than something we are reluctantly driven to?  What if even when legal justice has been meted out we chose to pour out personal grace and mercy on those who offended us? 

This is a personal challenge that the Lord has shown to me through the gentle hearts of my children, not a sermon given from a place of having already arrived.   All I can say is that the change in the heart of child who was being punished when the "victim" asked me to show mercy was something that pure justice could never bring about. It spoke to my heart and revealed things to me that have always bothered me about those "turn the other cheek" teachings.