Fight or forgive

The other night at Bible class, we talked about forgiveness.

It's so easy to talk about forgiveness when you are sitting in pews with fellow Christians, discussing how we are supposed to forgive infinitely, just like God forgives us.

And so I sat there all high and mighty, listening and reading verses thinking, "Why yes, I would have forgiven that unfaithful servant just as his master did, or yes, I have forgiven people seventy times seven many times in my life. Forgiveness isn't hard for me, no way! I got this one!"

However, as the minutes ticked by, I was reminded that, geesh, just that night before, less than 24 hours earlier; I verbally agreed to allow my daughter to punch someone because of how they were treating her sister.

Oops! One of my daughters is having some trouble with some kids at school and that night it got kinda bad. When my other daughter filled me in on what these lovely kids had said and did, she told me she felt like punching them out of respect for her sister and then asked me if I would be okay with that. And she was serious.

After hearing what these kids did, I was of course, pretty steamed as well, and boldly said, "Punch 'em!" Her eyes lit up and she asked, "Really?! You'd let me do that?"

Even though I was so mad I could have easily punched someone myself, once I saw her amazement at my response, I then I realized that was probably not good parenting advice, so I recanted my statement by saying, "No, don't punch anyone cause you'll just break your hand and then won't be able to play anything for a while, so if you were going to do anything, you should have slapped them." There. Much better parenting advice. Safe violence. She quickly responded with, "So if I got suspended for slapping them, you'd be okay with that?" Oh man, this was getting out of control. My other daughters and Hubby just sat and stared at us while we had this ridiculous conversation, I'm assuming with the knowledge that we would both eventually calm down and stop with the Muhammed Ali talk.

I had to get this under control, so I pushed aside my own angry feelings for these kids' actions and waffled. "No, don't slap anyone, maybe just a good 'accidental' shove. Ya know, like an 'Oh, I'm sorry, I tripped' shove." "No wait, stop, don't do that either, they'll just push you back," I recanted again. Oh for crying out loud, I was NOT doing a good job here. So after a few more minutes to think rationally, I had the perfect answer, "How about, instead of being mean back, you just smile every time you see them staring at you or making fun of you? Just give them a big ol' friendly, cheesy, smile like you can't believe how happy they make you! Wave at them and real good and sarcastic, ask them how they're doing and tell them to have a super fabulous day!" Kill them with kindness! Mean people hate kindness. They don't know what to do with it. Confuses them.

My girls actually loved that idea, more than the whole Rocky Balboa and Jerry Springer show ideas in fact. So after I cleaned up my parenting mess I had made at beginning of our conversation, they agreed that sarcasm and friendliness would be the course of action and they laughed together about how far they could take it. All innocent of course! And so in bible class, as I sat there proud of my ability to forgive, I was quickly reminded of how very difficult that actually is. Easy when it's something little or not a big deal, but almost impossible when it's something done to your child. Punching instantly seemed like the perfect solution and forgiveness was far from an option. Guess that's why God talks about forgiveness a lot. Hope He forgives me for this one!