Here I sit, to tell a story. I have my coffee to my right, my laptop in hand and children quietly playing with each other so I can focus. Today was not this peaceful even just 20 minutes ago… The story I am about to tell, I have only revealed such a side of myself to my immediate family living in my own home (for they are the prey) and to a couple of other women who have expressed when they were young moms they fought this battle, too.
This morning is an overcast day so far, summer is fast approaching, but here in southern California it can be 75 degrees and still cloudy because of the marine layer from the ocean. The clouds burn off into a crystal clear day usually between 10 am and noon. So my morning starts out dark, but the house is not quiet to match the foreboding but empty-threatening sky. Nathanael wakes up squawking as usual, even after taking him out of his crib, he insists on baba-ing and dada-ing and blahblah-ing all the way down the hallway into the living room. My husband works nights so he drags himself into bed at the miserable hour of 4 AM, so by 8 AM I do the best I can to keep the house silent. You try doing that with an 8 month old and a 4 year old! Hah!
I hush him and shush him but to no avail, I change his diaper with his cawing narrative adding to the process. Okay, okay, I am also doing my best not to be totally annoyed. I haven’t even turned on the coffee pot, and Nathan is not making a cooing happy sound, but a whiney cawing sound that seems to say “Ma, you’re not doing it right!” I am truly holding in frustration at this point. The morning progresses, I get my coffee, Lauren gets out of bed in a cheery mood. I am able to get dressed without crying, whining or a long stream of questions such as,
“Do our bones hold our body together?”
“Did you know my favorite shape is a rectangular prism?”
“Do you want to play butterflies and ladybugs?”
(These questions follow just after I am dressed. Of course this came from Lauren, the old soul that she is.)
I get to my coffee, I crack open http://www.biblegateway.com since I know my bible will be snatched up by baby hands with sticky fingers at any moment… And it happens.
I lose it. I go nuts. I throw a tantrum fit for a two year old, not a mother-of-two!
Lauren prances in with her pillow-pets and exclaims it is time to play butterflies and ladybugs as previously requested. (Pillow pets are these stuffed animals that lay flat like pillows, (pointless? oh no. It’s an ingenious million dollar invention because she has three of them.) She lays them on the end table next to the couch so she can open the baby gate that blocks our living room from the rest of our apartment.
She sets them on the end table.
No big deal right?…Except that my coffee is there. And she is pushing them toward the middle so they won’t fall off the edge. Pushing them toward my coffee cup. Coffee is extremely hot, it stains everything it touches. It is hot. It is messy. She is going to spill the coffee! So to prevent her from spilling it I say, “NOT ON THE TABLE. YOU’LL SPILL THE COFFEE!”
In a knee-jerk reaction (or just a plain old jerk reaction) I smack the pillow pets off the table and onto the floor.
Along with the coffee cup. Full of coffee. Hot coffee. Staining coffee.
Before I can say anything else, I spurt out some obscenities and go flying to grab a towel. I grab the first towel I can and run back to the couch whose arm is saturated by now. I am about to start drying, dabbing and wiping when I notice I grabbed Lauren’s delicate and very special bathroom towel with princesses on them. So I fling it to the side and run to get another less important towel. As I come back, Lauren is staring at her beautiful towel lying neglected and abused on the living room floor. I am furiously scrubbing the couch arm with the towel muttering at myself for my stupidity when she interjects:
“I was going to use that princess towel.. NOW it is covered in coffee.” (crossing her arms in sadness)
Having no compassion on my four year old, since I am still in a spitting-mad rage, I toss a pillow pet in her direction and continue on my ravenous slaughter of the coffee spill. I glance over as I hear her sputtering in the corner.
As I should be able to empathize, she has become very sensitive to my angry outbursts, creating great emotion.
A moment of clarity washes over me and I pull her over to me, hug her, apologize by saying, “I am sorry, the coffee was my fault. It is not your fault. I shouldn’t have thrown your pillow pet. I shouldn’t have been mad and tossed them in the first place. I should not be saying bad words or mean things. It’s not your fault. You are a good girl. I love you. I am sorry.”
James 1:19-21- Why, my beloved brothers, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God. Why lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.”
Ephesians 4:29-32 “No foul language is to come from your mouth, but only what is good for building up someone in need, so that it gives grace to those who hear. And don’t grieve God’s Holy Spirit. You were sealed by Him for the day of redemption. All bitterness, anger and wrath, shouting and slander must be removed from you, along with all malice. And be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as God also forgave you in Christ.”
These are small steps toward recovery. Recovery is not a melodramatic term for what I am going through. At all. It is a recovery process, like drug addiction or alcoholism, or even an eating-disorder because it is a habit that has consumed me and has caused me to try to live a double-life. It is a dark secret that I am exposing to the light, the one I find in God’s solace through His spirit and through talking to others to LET IT OUT.
Holly, holy love--from God 