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Yeah, one of those.
To make things worse, the Knight wasn't home. He was waiting for AAA at our broken down van. Yes, it broke. down. AGAIN.
So, I managed to feed the girls dinner (so what if it was cereal, I was miserable) and put them to bed before passing out on the couch.
About two hours later, I woke up from my stupor of sleeping then getting sick in the bathroom to realize that there were some funny noises going on upstairs. Upstairs, where it should have been quiet because both the girls are sleeping, right?
I literally dragged my miserable self up the stairs to find them awake, standing in their bedroom and holding an empty lotion bottle. This particular lotion bottle was BIG and it had nearly been full when I put them to bed, so I wondered very briefly where all the lotion had gone before my eyes focused and I realized where it went. Their entire room was covered, everywhere. The desk, bookcase, bureaus, even the bed. And both girls were covered, too. Lotion EVERYWHERE.
I lost it. I yelled, I screamed, I pointed fingers. I stopped at one point, ran into the upstairs bathroom to get sick, and realized that the bathroom was covered in lotion, too. That's when I really went to town with the yelling.
The whole time, the girls just stood there with wide eyes and jaws dropped. I'm not sure what scared them more, the condition I was in or my anger.
Everything that I had absorbed about positive discipline had FLOWN out of my head the second I had seen the lotion everywhere. There was no reason, no guidance, just ANGER.
I cleaned up as much as I could in the state I was in, put the girls back to bed and threw myself back onto the couch. Shortly after the Knight came home and when he said hello I said, "Oh, can you see me? I'm surprised I'm big enough to exist, because I feel about this small" and held my thumb and index finger a tiny space apart.
Nobody is perfect, and I know that. I'm thankful for that. But the speed and rate that my anger had consumed me SCARES me. I could not believe that I had lost control that quickly, and I can't understand why. It's just lotion. Not paint, not black marker, no one was hurt, nothing was damaged. The girls now have really soft skin.
Even so, for me this wasn't a lesson about how nobody is perfect, or that loving discipline works better for my family then yelling and spanking, but more about learning to forgive myself. Even Jesus lost his temper. It doesn't make me mean, it doesn't make me a bad parent, it just reminds me to be more gentle and easy on myself; to be more forgiving; and to be more open to these opportunities to learn.
To remind myself that I am still, and will be for the rest of my life, a work in progress.
2 comments:
I'm trying to be more calm and not yell all the time. I'll bet they were in shock that you raised your voice.
I should try that technique. But how do you manage to stay so calm all the time?
That sounds all too familiar. It is so hard to keep your temper when you are feeling bad physically. We are all doing the best that we can and well no one is perfect.
I remember my mom once throwing a cordless phone she got so mad at something me or my brother did. The phone broke. We still tease her about it to this day, though in the moment I'm sure we were upset. IDK that kinda makes me feel a little better to know that some things we really will look back on and laugh.
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