What Did You Do Today That You Weren’t Suppose To?

Robert, Diogo and Gabriel when they got home from school today. They definitely keep us on our toes: )

What did you do today that you weren’t suppose to? That’s the question I asked my boys tonight. Wait a minute, let me back-up a little bit...

Late this afternoon I heard a big hound dog barking out in the jungle behind our house. The way that our property is situated (it sits in a valley in between 3 mountains) the sound really echoes. You can hear everything. So, when I initially heard the dog, I could tell it was running through the jungle (howling/barking like hound dogs do) and getting closer and closer to the part of our property that all our ducks live on. So I asked the boys to go and scare it off so that it didn’t eat any of our ducks. The boys took off and they disappeared into the jungle. I could hear them for a little while and then I could hear the dog howling and going away in the opposite direction and off of our property. Good job boys: )

But then I didn’t hear the boys coming back home. So I waited a few minutes and then I had Ana yell out into the jungle for them to come home. A few minutes later they all came running back telling me all about their brush with death as they barely escaped the rabid demon dog... they tend to over-exaggerate (always!) so I just told them, “good job” and thanked them for handling the situation.

At the end of the day Robert (our 7 year old) got out of the shower, got dressed and then walked up to me and said, “Dad, we did something today that we we’re suppose to.” And I said, “really? What was that?” And he said, “we climbed a tree.” Really? 

You see, this is a rule we have in our house- no climbing trees. Now before you go gettin’ all judgmental on me, let me explain. We live in the jungle where there are millions of trees. Big trees too. And if we let the boys climb trees unsupervised, they’d climb the biggest one they could find because they have no restraint and no fear. They’d try and jump from tree top to tree top (it’s that no fear thing). I’ve see it before (before we had the rule). And if... no, when someone falls, then what? We live way out in the middle of nowhere. The closest hospital is 30-40 minutes away on a good day. And then you have to wait God knows how long to get taken care of. Then add to that the fact that there’s soooo many tree snakes out there. They’ve been attacked (actually chased) by them before and for some reason the tree snakes aren’t afraid of humans like some of the other snakes are here. So not climbing trees is a good rule: )

So anyway, I sent Robert upstairs and when Diogo and Gabriel finished taking showers I asked them the question of the day, “what did you do today that you weren’t suppose to?” They both stood there and you could literally see the wheels turning. Gabriel said, “let me think for a minute.” Diogo said, “oh... we jumped in the trashcans.” It seems as though they used the 30 gallon Rubbermade trashcans, that we shipped here in our container from the US, as shuttles by jumping around inside of them like you would if you were jumping in a sack race. As innocent as that sounds, that’s not good. If they break them, we can’t replace them! They don’t have trashcans that big in this country and if they did they’d probably cost $1,000,000! Then Gabriel said, “oh, we went off the property.” And I said, No that’s not it.” Then Diogo said, “oh, we_________.”  Then Gabriel said, “oh, we_______.” And again, I said, “no, that’s not it either.” 

This went on for at least 5-10 minutes (them listing off all the things they did wrong today) and it got to the point that I finally had to say, “stop!” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. How many things do they do wrong every day that I never even find out about? This is crazy. And the bad part is that they knew that they were wrong when they were doing all that stuff. They didn’t do things accidentally- they did it purposely. I just sent them upstairs and told them that we’d talk about it in the morning.

But as I sat there, I started thinking... “are there things in my life that I do that are wrong  (and just because God doesn’t immediately chastise me) that I think I’m getting away with them? Because unlike me, He sees everything. He knows every thought, every bad attitude, every offense, every sin... there’s nothing hidden from His sight.

So having come to the realization that I’m not perfect either and that I do things wrong too, it helped me parent them from a different perspective. The perspective that we’re all broken and tempted to try and “get away with stuff.” And rather than getting so frustrated and angry, it allows me to love them and discipline them with more grace and with more mercy. Now don’t get me wrong, I still give good ole spankins’. If I don’t discipline them it means I don’t love them. But even then it’s with a heart of “we’re all people who need Jesus.” Even my kids: )

Love Ya,

Jim

PS- they explained to me that the reason that they climbed the tree was to wait until the dog walked by so they could jump on it... really.

So, on the "no climbing trees rule"... I rest my case: )