The Power of Repentance

Here’s the timeline:

Thursday (Dec 8th) I got a call from daycare that Aurora had a runny nose. Took her to the doctor for a covid, rsv and flu test, all negative. Kept her home the rest of the week for observation. By Monday, no other symptoms had appeared, took her in to daycare (4 days home).

Monday (Dec 12th) Drop Aurora off with her little runny nose and as I’m leaving The Spirit says, “don’t go too far”. So, I head to the Ingles by her daycare rather than the one close to home to do my weekly shopping. Got a phone call within 15 min of drop off that she was now coughing in addition to having a runny nose, and I needed to pick her up asap. (5 days home).

Tuesday (Dec 13th) Aurora develops a fever of 101. Thick cough, irritable, clearly sick. (6 days home).

Wednesday (Dec 14th) A trip to Range Urgent care at 6:45pm for another round of covid, rsv and flu tests as communiques from her daycare reveal that her classroom, nay her ENTIRE DAYCARE, has been afflicted with an outbreak of all three and officially shut down to stop the spread. All three are (again) negative and Aurora is diagnosed with a particularly nasty upper respiratory infection. Treatment includes honey, ibuprofen for pain relief as needed, and to chill the fuck out because it’s a virus and you can’t do anything besides be nice and pray (7 days home, and the date of my last blog post).

Saturday (Dec 17th) I got sick. And just for clarification, I am breastfeeding which makes anything fun or actually useful off limits. NyQuil, Sudafed, Mucinex – nope. I can take Tylenol and a real basic cough medicine. I can’t even really justify a shot of whiskey in my tea, lest I want my newborn to start singing sea shanties and peppering her baby babble with curse words. Add my own difficulty sleeping due to cough and congestion to the waking up and breastfeeding sleep cycle (10 days home).

Monday (Dec 19th) Jubilee got sick. This was, by far, the worst part. She is 8 weeks old so there is literally not ONE thing you can do to ease her suffering. No honey, Tylenol, nada, zip, zilch. So now we have; 2 sick kids, 1 sick adult, night time feeds, my own difficulty sleeping, and NOW a newborn who is waking up at night with such a thick cough she chokes. And a partridge in a pear tree. (12 days home).

I say all of this to set the stage for Thursday, Dec 22nd. I was, myself, dealing with a sore throat and a cough. We had been to the pediatrician with Jubilee the day prior, she looked awful. Red puffy eyes, congestion, it was so sad. She also tested negative for the trifecta of death but we were warned by her pediatrician that the worst of it would be Wednesday and Thursday, which it was. At this point, Aurora had been home for 15 days and on top of being sick was bored out of her mind. I was doing everything in my power to keep her entertained and engaged, including my mom of the year idea; I drug the kiddie pool into the basement, filled it with warm water, surrounded it with towels and played a Youtube video of the sound of beach waves so she could dress up in her bathing suit and play “beach” when she woke up from her nap. It was a hit that kept her in good spirits for all of 2 hours. After that, it was back to the usual; crying “mama hold me” anytime I had to do anything with Jubilee (basically always) and defiantly shouting “no” to every. fucking. little. thing.

This is environment in which I found myself that Thursday afternoon; sitting on the bathroom floor, a book we were about to read tucked up under my right armpit, and holding a small bowl of ramen that I was attempting to feed my over tired, snotty nosed, emotionally volatile toddler who was sitting on the potty, in both hands. Positioning the forkful of noodles face height, it was one of those, “we’ll read our book after one bite, just take one bite” deals. She normally likes this particular dish and because she often says “no” then takes a bite and is like, “hell yes” I was certain she just needed to EAT THE FUCKING FORKFUL OF RAMEN. The book was bribery, yes. The potty was her idea. She kept turning her head away and saying no, I kept holding the fork close to her face and saying yes. And then she snapped.

My two-year-old slapped the bowl of ramen out of my hands and noodles went flying all over the bathroom floor.

I was so fucking pissed. Just fucking over it. So damned tired and overwhelmed and frustrated. I have never hit my kid. Never spanked her, never really needed to. But in that moment, as rage and exhaustion shook hands in the ring, I wanted to hit her. I desperately wanted to hit my child.

Instead, I took hold of her wrist and very firmly said, “you do not ever, EVER hit mama like that. You never, EVER knock something out of mama’s hands like that again Aurora.”

Her face went dead and her eyes widened. She avoided my eye contact, the shame of my displeasure overtaking her. I told her we would not be reading our book on the potty and to finish up going to the bathroom. I stood up and left the room to both get the broom to sweep up the noodles and take a breather in the kitchen. Aurora fell apart. She cried and cried “mama hold me” as the desperate need to be back in my good graces overwhelmed her. And that’s when my own shame set in.

Kids will always find some way to blame themselves, never the parent, when things between them go awry. Aurora felt the break in our connection and immediately blamed herself and was crying out for my forgiveness. As I swept up the noodles, I realized two things;

#1 - she said “no” repeatedly, and repeatedly, I ignored her “no”

#2 – I owed her an apology

Let me repeat that; I owed my 2-year-old an apology.

Now, I could have looked at that thought in my head and said “No I don’t! I’m the parent, she’s the child!” or “she shouldn’t have hit the bowl out of my hands” or “she has to learn blah blah blah”.

But that wouldn’t have addressed the shame I felt.

That wouldn’t address what I knew I had done wrong.

I saw that I held a single brick in my hand and if I allowed her to shoulder all of the blame for what had transpired in the bathroom, I would have slathered that brick with mortar and put it down between us. It would have set a precedent for allowing Aurora to take responsibility for her actions while I took none for my own. It would have set a precedent that authority is infallible and that the flow of good will between her and I was completely up to her. I would have taught her that she was responsible for managing her emotions, but I was not responsible for managing mine. I realized that every time thereafter that I, as her parent, taught her any of these lies, another brick would have been laid until nothing but an emotional wall existed between us. I would have wasted a lifetime telling my daughter about the power of repentance and doing absolutely nothing to actually model it. I would have wasted a lifetime allowing the bricks of my own shame to rob me of real relationship with her. So, I swallowed my pride and did the right thing.

I went back into the bathroom, gently held my daughter's hands and said, “Aurora, you tried to tell mama that you didn’t want to eat the noodles, and I didn’t listen. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you when you said no. Now, it’s still not ok that you knocked the noodles out of my hand – it’s never ok to hit anyone, especially mama. But you had already said no, and I wasn’t listening so I understand why you did it. Let’s you and I both work on using our words to communicate, and not our hands, ok?”

Did she get it? Maybe not. But I did, and that’s the point. In that moment the flow of love between us was restored because I took responsibility and repented for my actions. The rest of the afternoon she was much calmer and more collected. She was a better listener and had fewer meltdowns. We had a better relationship.

This is what makes Christianity such an attractive spiritual practice for me, and why Jesus is my number one main man. The point of Christianity is not how are you going to die it’s how you’re going to live. And the first step towards enlightenment, in that spiritual practice, is the acknowledgment that there have been moments like the one I had in the bathroom that have placed bricks of shame between you and God. There are moments where a lack of accountability for the harm you have caused yourself or others has been the mortar in the wall of guilt being built between you and God. Jesus came to show us another way – the way of facing our shame and our guilt and simply saying, “I’m sorry. I fucked up”. The way of restoring relationship first to God, then to ourselves, and finally to one another. The word “sin” in the bible is often translated from a number of words used in the original Hebrew. The most common is from the root word, châtâ (khata) which really just means to miss the mark or the goal. When we look at the whole of our lives and take responsibility for the ways we have failed to miss the goal of love, compassion, gratitude, what have you, we are given the most incredible blessing. One of restored relationship.

Oh Holy Night is my favorite Christmas song. It hits me hard in the feels every fucking time.

Fall on your knees,

Oh hear, the angel voices

Oh night divine

Oh night, when Christ was born

Even typing the letters makes my throat close up and tears spring to my eyes. If you have ever felt the sweet restoration of relationship after a true and heartfelt apology, you can understand why. We work out in such a small way between one another what is so magnificent when it happens between us and God. Christ, the Messiah, the one who has come to show us the true path of restored relationship, has been born. That no more blood need be shed, that no more lives spent in the spiral of shame and guilt need be lived. That we are, once and for all, reconciled to God first, ourselves second, to one another last if we just have the courage to pick up our heads and say, “I’m sorry”. And make no mistake, it is courage my friends. It takes a lot of courage to say, “I’m sorry”.

But damn, if it’s not worth it.