The Exploder Who Blames Others

Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled

so that you can pray.

(1 Peter 4:7)

Every now and then I attempt to be “that mom.” You know, the one who wields a glue gun whilst craftifying something worthy of a showcase display at the Hobby Lobby. And the one who joyfully reads aloud to her children without being sneaky and skipping pages. Yes, her.

But it never works out for me.

Take, for example, the brilliant time I decided to attend a book warehouse clearance sale. I loaded up my kids and decided this was the perfect time to help my people fall in love with books. I wrongly figured a sale could help anyone feel the literary love. Not so.

My kids couldn’t have cared less about the books.

What they wanted was in a crate off to the side of all the bookshelves. The brightly colored packages were laced with promises. I plucked from my kids’ hands one that claimed to contain the coolest-ever science experiment. Anytime a brightly colored package uses the words cool and experiment on the front, a mother should beware. Especially when said package is marked down to one dollar. She should be very wise and tell her children, “No.”

But, tired from all efforts to convince them to love books, I rationalized that since we’d dedicated our morning to this sale, we should at least walk out with something educational. So I bought several of the kits.

Sea monkeys. That’s what the kits were supposed to grow. Key words: supposed to. My kids were beyond excited to get this party started. Into the container went the chemicals, the water, the little food crystals, and plastic green trees upon which the sea monkeys could play once they hatched.

It’s at this point I should let you know that this is one of those good news/bad news stories. Yes, ma’am, which would you like first?

The good news … something did hatch.

The bad news … it wasn’t sea monkeys.

After leaving the experiment overnight, I woke to find my kitchen invaded by the biggest, nastiest, hairiest giant flies you have ever seen. I’m not sure if our sea monkeys had a mutation situation going on or if some sort of larvae had gotten into the packages and eaten our sea monkeys.

Either way, it was awful.

The moral of this story is simple. Some moms are equipped by the hand of God to be “that mom.” They have been formed with the three-C gene — Cooking, Crafting, and Cleaning come easily and naturally to them.

Others of us have been delightfully chosen to provide the comic relief necessary to keep this world entertained. And to keep future therapists in business.

I know this story sounds funny now, but at the time it was yet one more thing that excluded me from belonging to the good mom club. My internal good mom/bad mom dialogue tormented me:

Good moms grow sea monkeys. Bad moms grow nasty flies.

Wait! Good moms don’t even buy sea monkey kits at a book sale. Bad moms struggle with telling their kids no and give in too easily.

Good moms get on the Internet and figure out how to turn a fly debacle into an enriching science lesson for their kids. Bad moms kill the stupid flies and hide all evidence of that from their kids.

And on and on the dialogue went. And with each assurance I was a bad mom, my emotions ratcheted higher and higher. On a stress scale from 1 to 10, I could have been hovering around 4, but then this conversation in my head pushed me all the way up to 7. Add to that a kid squabble over who licked whose toast at breakfast and the fact I couldn’t find my cell phone, and I was all the way up to 9.8, ready to explode and blame anyone and everyone who had the misfortune to be nearby. What I felt was anger. What I needed was self-control.

I’m trying to better understand this whole concept of self-control. The Bible includes many verses about the subject, among them Proverbs 25:28, Galatians 5:23, and 1 Peter 4:7. But it’s hard to display self-control when someone else does things out of my control that yank my emotions into a bad place. So here’s a little tidbit I’m learning. When someone else’s actions or statements threaten to pull me into a bad place, I have a choice. I do. It may not feel like I have a choice. In fact, it may feel like I am a slave to my feelings — but I’m not. Remember, feelings are indicators, not dictators. Feelings can indicate there is a situation I need to deal with, but they shouldn’t dictate how I react. I have a choice.