Another typical day….

Thursday was an interesting day. I am often struck with unbelief by the people who come across my path. Sometimes I can’t believe a human being can be so self absorbed. For instance, I thought it would be fun to take our kiddos to the local spray ground, you know get wet, cool off, and run off some steam. We rode our bikes, well, make that I rode a bike with a little camper on the back that princess Eden and prince Canon sat in, then Zion had to ride his scooter the whole way. You would have thought I asked him to ride to Mexico with the way he was carrying on. “It is really a long way momma!” It’s .5 miles. Not that far. Poor kid, he’s quite abused.

We were having a super fun time, running through the sprayers and getting each other wet. I really didn’t want to be that wet, so I sat down and just watched everyone splashing. Canon had met a friend I saw. It looked like they might have fun together, and I was glad to see him being social. This new little friend was drinking from one of the sprayers, gross!! I looked over at his mom, who was yappin’ it up on the cell phone, I know, shocking, and she didn’t say anything. Ok, maybe she didn’t care if her child got some sick disease from drinking out of recycled water. Whatever. Then, this little spawn spit the water right in Canon’s face. As only a mother can I yelled,” oh sick!!” and ran over to rescue my sweet baby. I then proceeded to tell that child in no uncertain terms that this was disgusting and you just can’t spit in someone’s face. The mom was not far behind me, and I heard her getting off her phone call in order to make the kid come and apologize. I didn’t want an apology I realized, justice, that’s what I wanted. A forced “I’m sorry”, is not going to get that gross spit water off my sweet baby’s face now is it? He apologizes, I say, “we forgive you”. In the words of my husband ”Once more with feeling!” I am talking about me. I didn’t want to forgive him, but Jesus says it’s pretty much the right thing to do.

Wait there was more to my day! After that, we went next door to swing and slide at the park. The next encounter was with a mom of twins who was force-feeding them ice cream. I am not lying. Forcing them. The weird thing was they just wanted to swing. Which is what we were doing. She kept saying sort of loudly that there was only one swing, and there are two of them. It wouldn’t be fair if only one of them could swing, so they had to just eat their ice cream. It wasn’t a ”Here, wanna a bite?” it was “ Eat your ice cream!!!” I was waiting for the swear words to start flowing. I finally couldn’t take it and said, “ Here have our swing”. She then went on to say, “No they don’t need to swing, they can do that at home. I want them to eat this ice cream.” I started to wonder if there were sleeping pills or something in the ice cream. I have never seen a parent force ice cream on a child. We left our swing anyway and let her work it out.

As I rode home I was thinking how unbelievable people are. Then it hit me… I have NO idea what those families days had been like and what a wretch I am for even judging them. I feel like the gross one now. You see, when I lost our third baby, Judah, two weeks later I was at a park and there was a family of three kids. I was with my two at the time. I was just getting out of the house trying to do something other than be sad. The mom proceeded to tell me how lucky I was because I only had two children. Hers were such a burden she said. She kept going on and on. It was truly only because of God that I didn’t just spill my guts and tell her how stupid she was for saying such a thing. Instead I just said nothing. She didn’t know. How could she have. If she did, I am quite sure she would have been embarrassed and mortified. Instead of being angry at her I decided that I would always watch what I say and how I judge folks. There is a song, and I don’t know the name or anything but it basically says, “they don’t know what you’re going through”. Everybody is lost in their own little world. I was so caught up in the woman being on her cell phone and assuming she was just selfish that I didn’t stop to think, maybe today is a bad day. Maybe she was just trying to survive Thursday. Her boy spitting was the last thing she may have needed.

So now I am back to trying not to judge, because I don’t know what anyone is going through. Even if they are having the best day ever, it’s not my place to assume the worst. Jesus said, “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you”. Shame on me for not allowing that to be my first response.