Last night, before Jake went to sleep, I made time to read a devotion to him.
And before my mom gets her hopes up when she reads this (because she's bought three devotion books for him), I have to admit this doesn't happen every night - me reading a devotion. Some days I let my feelings of tiredness overwhelm me by 8:30 pm, and instead I'm raising my voice to the tone of something like, "I cannot possibly do one more thing in this night! I just can't!" (Of course I still do, but for some reason, it makes me feel better to be dramatic and raise my voice and threaten not to. So not mature. I know.)
But on the days when I've taken not just one but two b12 vitamins and the voice of the Holy Spirit is telling me to, "Read your firstborn a devotion!" (Or maybe that's his grandmother's voice I hear?), I lay with him in bed and heed to the voice.
The Bible verse (which was also the moral of the story) we read was "Do to others what you would have them to do you." Luke 6:31. When I read this and a few paragraphs about being kind and lending a helping hand, a super bright light bulb went off in my head. I had the perfect example...something that happened yesterday at school. A classmate had thrown a toy that hit him in the face and made a small cut on the inside of his lip. Apparently he cried and chewed on a piece of ice and all was right in his four-year old world again. And it was exactly what I needed to get the entire point of this verse across which made it work for me. "And just like today when your friend threw a toy and hit you in the face. That hurt didn't it?" Insert head nodding yes. "So that means because you wouldn't want to have something thrown at you, you shouldn't throw something at someone else." "Right, Mommy!" "Right, Baby!" We said goodnight to each other, and I went to bed feeling like I had taught him well.
Then this morning, I got this text from Jim: Call Faye when you get a chance. Apparently Jake has an anger problem we need to deal with.
What the?! Noooooo. That shouldn't be possible. Really?!
I found "Ms. Faye" in my list of contacts on my cell and dialed her number. We talked for nearly twenty minutes about his tightly-clinched fists that he holds by his sides while his teeth are grit together and (brace yourself) him giving knuckle sandwiches to his classmates (and non-classmates which is what prompted the phone call to Jim who, in turn, called me because this first full week at his new job is keeping him so busy I'm not even sure if he's taking bathroom breaks and text messages are all I get pretty much during the day). "Boys will be boys!", she said, "And his behavior isn't totally inappropriate when you consider his age....He's taking up for himself...He gets his feelings hurt...And when he's had enough, he's had enough."
We talked about how we'll handle it all and how we'll work through it both at school and at home, and before we said "Goodbye" and before she went to go threaten Jake within an inch of his life (because I told her she had my permission to), I remembered the devotion we shared last night. "Ms. Faye! You will never believe what Jake and I read together and talked about last night!".....
Yeah, that really sunk in didn't it? And yeah...the chances he'll use his fist to dish out knuckle sandwiches have gone waaaay down.
