As I stood in the kitchen cooking supper I began to hear screaming from down the hall. I stood there for a moment to see if the situation would fix itself and for a brief moment all was quiet. I went back to mixing and pouring when all of a sudden the screaming started again.
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Kristina was almost 6 years old and Gabe was nearly 2. The house we were living in had 4 bedrooms so we turned the smallest bedroom into a playroom for them. There was a kitchen set, baby dolls galore, trucks, cars, airplanes with a feather boa mixed in somehow. The kids generally played pretty well together even though both of them were bossy. Well, actually they are both still bossy!
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I turned the stove off, laid down the bowl and spoon and walked down the hall towards the playroom. As I rounded the corner I heard "Gib it here-a!" spoken in the sweetest baby talk ever! Gabe put an "A" at the end of most of his words until he was in the 2nd or 3rd grade. "NO!!!!!!!" Kristina started yelling.
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"What are ya'll fighting about?" I screamed rounding the corner into the playroom. If I would have only held my tongue for just another second or two I would have seen it for myself. Kristina was laying on the floor with her hands above her head holding onto a jump rope. Gabe was straddling over her, hands full of hair, nose to nose with her screaming "Gib it here-a!" while she was steadily screaming "NO!!!!!"
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I threw my hand over my mouth to keep from laughing at that very moment. Put my "Mommy" face on and snatched Gabe up off of Kristina, took the jump rope from her hand and stood there in between them while they were staring each other down like they used to do in the wild wild west. I knew better than asking what the problem was because if I had they would both begin speaking at the exact same time and it would sound like gibberish from a far off land that I would never be able to identify.
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"You both need to learn to share and not be selfish! You can each play with the jump rope, take turns, be kind to each other. Kristina, you holding it above your head so he can't reach it isn't going to solve the problem. Gabe, you pulling her hair out surely isn't going to solve the problem. Both of you, to your rooms!" I demanded.
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I took the jump rope with me, escorted each of them to their rooms and went back to the kitchen to finish cooking supper. Oh how times have changed. They no longer fuss over jump ropes and Kristina doesn't hold things above her head any more. She knows that holding anything above her head will keep it away from Gabe but she has learned that Gabe will punch her in the stomach, make her double over and she quickly hands over whatever it was that she was trying to keep away. Their fights don't happen as often any more as they used to but they do happen. Shane and I laugh and say that one day we believe we will come home from work and find a hole in our wall that is life size from where they argued over what they were going to watch on t.v. and before long it turned into WWIII.
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Yesterday I added up the amount of debt that Shane and I owed and we have begun working on a plan to pay that debt off. We needed to know that exact dollar figure so that we could begin to pray specifically and boy did that dollar figure really hurt my feelings! Phew....I thought I was going to cry. But, anyway, I came in this morning to work and was looking for an answer, some comfort, some word of encouragement and I turned to Psalm 119 and read verses 36 and 37 "Turn my heart toward your statutes and not toward selfish gain. Turn my eyes away from worthless things; preserve my life according to your word."
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Even though I'm a grown up now I can still be so selfish with possessions. It is as if I am still holding that jump rope over my head saying "You can't have it, you can't have it!" I use possessions as comfort just as I use food. This scripture hit me straight to the core today. I would not characterize myself as a selfish person but if I break it down into small little cubicles that I can disect and examine, yes, I am a selfish person. Funny how a few verses written so many years ago would have been written just for me, on this day, at this moment. God is so good! All the time, God is good!
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Yes, Lord, I will turn my eyes away from worthless things and preserve my life according to your word! Amen!
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