My parents and younger brother Easton were in town for the weekend. We went swimming and came back to the condo before they left. I said my goodbyes and got in the shower with Ivy to rinse off, as we always do after the pool. My family was packing up to leave.
As usual, I cleaned Ivy up and then yelled for Beth to come and grab Ivy from me. Beth didn’t come so I yelled again. After a couple minutes Beth still hadn’t come so I opened the shower door to make sure the maximum amount of sound waves would travel and yelled again.
I don’t like yelling. It was something I worried about when I started coaching basketball. Yelling feels inherently mean and unkind to me. I try not to raise my voice for almost any reason.
After the third yell I started to feel like a jerk. I wasn’t being a jerk; I was simply trying to make sure Beth heard me. After the third yell she came quickly into the bathroom. I apologized for yelling and said I wasn’t sure if she could hear me. Beth told me she heard me, but my family was just leaving, and she was saying goodbye.
For a split second I thought how my family heard me yelling also and felt ashamed for a moment before I reminded myself my yelling wasn’t malicious in any way. This was practical yelling; it served a purpose. I had to remind myself this because of my aversion to yelling. It wasn’t mean, I was trying to make sure Beth heard me.
This led me to a thought. I hope my parents know they raised me so that they never have to worry about how I speak to or treat others, especially my wife and daughters. I hope my parents know there are certain ways I would never speak to my wife and daughters. I hope they know I would never speak to anyone a certain way. I think they know that.
I hope to raise Ivy so that when she’s a grown up (can’t believe that’s going to happen) I’ll know how she speaks to people. I’ll know there’s certain ways she would never speak to anyone. I’ll know if she’s yelling there’s a purpose for it.
Why do we speak to people a certain way? Because Christ taught us that we’re all brothers and sisters and He showed the way. I hope I would never disappoint my parents or my heavenly parents with my behavior towards others. Of course, we slip sometimes. We aren’t perfect. But the Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches me why I should treat others the way I want to be treated. I hope to instill that in Ivy and Sage the same way my parents instilled it in me, so that I never have to wonder where her values lie and how she treats those she interacts with.
Sunday morning we were supposed to sleep in. We were going to church at a later time to join Beth’s family since her sister Eve was in town. Any parent knows how it goes when you’re hoping to sleep in. It’s like the kids have a sixth sense for your hope and immediately squash it. Sage woke up at 6:30 and Ivy was up at 6:45. This, for the record, is much earlier than even Sage, who isn’t a great sleeper, usually wakes up.
Beth brought the girls out to the couch. I was tired and groggy.
In true teamwork fashion, Beth and I decided to split up. I went back to sleep for an hour while Beth hung out with the girls. My hour felt like 5 minutes and I was back with Ivy and Sage while Beth got her additional rest before the day got into full swing.
I took Ivy and Sage into Ivy’s room.
Long story short – Sage was ready for a nap and unhappy about everything and anything. Ivy, the newly potty-trained, walked over to her bed, laid down, and had an accident in her bed. I learned that when I went to lay Sage in Ivy’s bed to rest and saw it was wet. I tried to feed Ivy a banana while Sage screamed and I cleaned up wet sheets and blankets. Ivy took the piece of banana I’d given her and threw it across the room. I tried to stay calm and asked her not to throw food. As I continued to clear off pee-covered sheets and blankets, Ivy walked to where I’d left my breakfast – the rest of the banana and a peeled orange – and proceeded to throw it all over the room.
That’s when I lost my patience.
Voices were raised. Toddlers were told to stand in the corner. Stern words were spoken. Sage was still screaming.
I lost my temper.
It was then, standing with Sage in my arms screaming, Ivy naked from the pajama shirt down, crying in the corner, that I started to take deep breaths.
It was then that I started trying to assess why my temper was so short.
“I’m usually better than this,” I thought to myself. “What’s going on? Well, I’m tired, obviously.”
Wait, why was I tired? (Well, besides always being tired).
Flashback to the previous night. Beth had taken Sage in to sleep, and I stayed on the couch. I thought about reading but then came across a movie on TV that I hadn’t watched in a long time. It was Super Bad. I have long cut rated R movies out of my life. But this was made for TV. All the curse words had been cut out. That didn’t make the movie a productive use of time to watch. I ended up staying up way too late watching this stupid movie.
I remembered all this as I stood with a screaming baby and a crying toddler, after I’d just yelled and not handled Ivy’s outbursts and energy nearly as well as I would have liked.
I realized I had no excuse for my behavior. Why was I tired, grumpy, and now losing my temper? Because I’d stayed up later than I should have. There are all the excuses – I deserve some time for myself, I deserve to be able to relax, I haven’t stayed up late for myself in so long, on and on. Was it the worst thing in the world for me to stay up late and watch a movie for myself? No. Was it the worst thing in the world, the next day, to yell at my daughter because I was now grumpy? No, but it felt like it.
My choices had consequences.
There was no excuse for how I had lost my temper with my girls.
I kneeled down by Ivy in the corner. My extended rocking of Sage had calmed her so she was quiet for a moment. I spoke to Ivy calmly and slowly, “Ivy, I just got very frustrated. I’m sorry. I should not have yelled. Will you forgive me?”
Smile.
“Yes, Daddy.”
I continued to tell Ivy that I get frustrated when she doesn’t listen and throws food. I told her I love her so much. I asked her to please help me the best she could and I’d try to be better too.
I sat with Sage on the floor and rocked her to sleep. Ivy, seemingly a completely different child, sat at her table. She got her laptop (a little pink toy), and a stack of books. It was calm. I realized I hadn’t meditated yet, something I usually do first thing in the morning. I asked Ivy if it was OK if I closed my eyes, meditated, and took some deep breaths.
“Yes, Daddy.”
I set a timer, closed my eyes, prayed, and breathed for 10 minutes. When I opened my eyes, Ivy was quietly reading books at her table.
I am off the charts blessed with my two girls. I love them so much. They’re amazing. Ivy is such a good kid. She is strong, patient, kind, gentle (most of the time), and smart. Sage is in a bit of a difficult stage. You can tell she wants to crawl and move and do so much. But she is so happy, smiley, and bouncy. My two girls are amazing.
I’m grateful for them. I’m grateful for how they teach me to grow and be better. I’m grateful for their patience with me. That moment when Ivy said she forgave me, man… what a feeling of love. Not just my love for her, which is endless, but also her love for me, which is clearly unconditional.
This was another parent and life lesson. My choices have consequences. I can do dumb stuff like stay up late and watch a movie. But I CAN’T take it out on my girls in the morning because I didn’t get enough sleep and now I’m grumpy.
It’s OK not to get enough sleep. It’s OK to be grumpy. It’s even OK to lose my temper sometimes. It’s OK for me to struggle. But it’s not OK to not give them my absolute best. It’s not OK to make excuses why it’s OK for me to lose my temper and yell at them. That’s not OK. Every action has consequences. It’s not their fault that I stayed up late.
I love them so much.
This parenting thing is hard, rewarding, growth-inspiring. I’m grateful for it. I’m grateful for every moment. The good and the bad. I love it. I love them. I love my family.
I recently watched a video depicting the famous rameumptom of Alma chapter 31. I’ve written about the rameumptom before.
The rameumptom was a tower built by the Zoramites for their prayers. They would stand atop this small tower and pray. Their prayers consisted of proclamations of how they were better than their brethren, and they thanked God for making them so much better than others.
In this video depiction, it showed a fancily dressed person strutting to the rameumptom, pushing aside someone on his way, cutting a line, and walking to the top while someone was already there. That person, apparently properly interpreting the danger of standing up to this man, quickly left his prayer so this man could yell with pride, “Holy, holy God, we believe that thou art God and we believe that thou art holy.”
That video can be watched here if you’re interested.
What I thought about as I watched this video is how strange the behavior would be for a follower of God to strut and push someone out of their way to offer a public prayer of pride. It was the spiritual God-follower pushing someone rudely out of the way that stood out to me.
President Nelson, Elder Soares, and Elder Christofferson recently all talked to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints about being kinder, more charitable, and avoiding contention in one session of General Conference. The impact of three of the highest-ranking members of our Church and apostles and prophets of the Lord all speaking on essentially the same topic in a 2-hour span was quite jarring.
As I watched this video of the corrupt Zoramites, I worried about this message from our leaders. I personally have been witness to so much contention and unkindness in social media in “LDS” or “doctrine” or supposed “Christ-centered groups” where combativeness sometimes seems more important than kindness and love. This has led me to lessen my usage of social media, despite loving the doctrinal topics sometimes explored, due to the hateful nature that the topics are explored in.
I worry about members of the Church of Jesus Christ that take being right more seriously than being loving.
How many members of our religion and all religions strut around with our beliefs and act like we’re better than those around us? We must not be the Zoramites. This, I believe, is what President Nelson, Elder Soares, and Elder Christofferson are trying to tell us. Followers of Jesus Christ should be loving first, second, and last. Followers of Jesus Christ should be distinguished by their kindness.
This behavior of someone knocking someone out of the way to go pray looks so similar to someone debating the merits of Christ’s gospel by putting down and insulting others. I hope we all avoid this behavior. As representatives of Jesus Christ, it’s important we remember the two great commandments: love and love.
I had an interesting thought recently. That thought was, do I want to be like Jesus Christ? What makes me want to be like Jesus Christ? Why do I want to be like Jesus Christ? What about Him makes me want to be like Him? Do others want to be like Christ? Do I know the attributes of Christ well enough to be confident I want to be like Him? Do others know Him well enough to want to be like Him?
We hear so often in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that we’re working to become like Jesus Christ. We have a children’s song (near and dear to my own heart) titled, “I’m trying to be like Jesus.”
Why?
When we say we want to eventually be like Him, do we know what He was/is like?
Recently I was playing pickup basketball at a church. It was relatively competitive. Those who know me well know how seriously I take basketball. There was one girl playing that wasn’t super competitive. She’d come the past few weeks and she somewhat lowered the level of basketball that was able to be played.
We were all, of course, nice to her. But some showed their frurstration in the level of basketball, I might have been one of them.
This last time I played I decided I was going to have this girl on my team. I decided, not only was I going to have this person on my team but I was going to pass to her, encourage her, cheer for her, and we were still going to win. The level of competition was such that, despite it being “somewhat” competitive, those were all realistic goals.
After the first game this girl came up to me and meekly asked if there was anything she could do better. So I gave her some pointers –
“If you’re open, shoot. Don’t pass back to us if you’re open,” and some general guidance on defense. She showed marked improvement and I was happy to have her on my team, especially over some athletic guys who could be ball hogs.
Every couple games she would ask me if there was anything she could do better and I continued to give some advice.
At the end of playing I told her how awesome she did that day and her response so, so warmed my heart, “thanks to you.” Such a simple statement.
And in that moment I remembered something. It didn’t matter if we won. It didn’t matter that the game was competitive. Nothing mattered. Except that this person had a fun time, felt welcome, felt loved. Being compassionate and caring was vastly more important than any game of basketball, despite how competive and riled up I can get during competition. I needed that reminder.
I come home from basketball often and feel good, happy. I usually tell Beth stories about what happened. It’s usually about some play I made, how the games went, how many we won and lost.
After that night I came home and told her, “sometimes I need to be reminded how good it feels to be kind to someone.”
Why do I want to be like Jesus? What is it about Him that makes me want to be like Him? What are His traits that I aspire towards?
The answer is in that story.
I felt better after that session of pickup basketball than I had in the last 10 combined. Her gratitude, and seeing someone feel welcome and have fun, was worth 10 game winning shots.
Jesus Christ is all the love. All the caring. All the compassion. All the service. All the joy.
Why do I want to be like Jesus? Because loving others provides the greatest reward I have personally felt in this life. Nothing in this life compares to feelings of love, and the feeling of doing something right.
This is in no way meant as a pat on my back for being a nice person. Jesus Christ is always a nice person, and He only asks that we be like Him in return. How interesting is that, consider it for a moment. Jesus Christ is perfectly selfless and loving to the point that all that He asks of us in return is to be perfectly selfless and loving to others. Is there any purer love than that? He makes this request not for Himself, but for us, all of us. He wants us to be like Him so that others can be happy. All He gets out of it is our joy.
How amazing is that.
I hope I can more and more every day, “try to be like Jesus.”
One morning at 7:30am I received a frantic call from my below neighbor yelling at me asking why I didn’t tell her my unit flooded.
I hadn’t had a ton of interactions with this neighbor, but this was the first time she yelled at me.
I calmly replied by saying, “there hasn’t been any flooding for me, what’s going on?”
She angrily told me that there must be flooding. She hadn’t been home for a week, and she could see it coming from the ceiling and how could I not tell her we had a leak!
I said, “Let me clarify, I haven’t seen any flooding on our end. If there’s a leak, I have no idea about it. But I will look into it right away and see if we can find anything.”
I got details on where her flooding was and all that.
I must emphasize that she was understandably freaking out. She was angry, she walked into her unit completely flooded and thinking I was responsible. I responded with a calm tone and explained my side and let her know I would get to the bottom of it as soon as possible.
This neighbor had a friend come over to look at her and my unit and determined the leak was coming from her end, thank goodness I wasn’t responsible. This friend of hers was working all evening in this hot, humid kitchen trying to fix her issue. Beth made him up a plate for dinner.
By the end of the week, with us not having water for most of it, this neighbor was leaving us a gift card to a restaurant (see title of post if you’re wondering where). I had been in constant communication with her throughout the week, helping however I could, and staying in touch on where they were at with repairs. This neighbor thanked us for our patience, help, and feeding her friend dinner that night, thus the gift card.
I thought back on that 7:30am call. What if I responded confrontationally to her call? What if my response was, “what do you mean a leak?! We don’t have a leak! That’s your problem!”
Even if it turned out to be her problem, we would have been at war, and Beth and I wouldn’t be headed to Cheesecake Factory for a free meal tonight.
Kindness, patience, understanding, and TONE can go such a long way.
I understood immediately when my neighbor called that she wasn’t mad at ME. She was frustrated. That frustration may have been pointed in my direction, but if I put myself in her shoes, I could immediately understand why.
Society has become too quick to yell back. If we all took a second and looked at it from the other person’s perspective, we’d have a lot less Twitter wars and a lot more visits to Cheesecake Factory.
No Coincidences 