Nov. 12, 2009

So I pick Harrison, 6, up from the bus stop today and ask the million dollar mommy question.
“Hey buddy! How was your day?”

“Terrible! It was the worstest of worst days ever!” he says.

“The worst? What was so terrible, baby?” I’m a mother; can I help it if my heart rate starts hammering away when I hear that my child had a bad day? I want nothing but cotton candy and carousels for him. Bad days give me hives.

He then informed me that toward the end of the school day, his teacher had called him to her desk right before recess. Sadly, he didn’t hear her and instead ran out to play. She was angry with his lack of hearing, but due to bus schedules, they ran out of time and she wants to talk to him about it in the morning.

“So that’s why I can’t go to school tomorrow,” he says, finishing off his story with a big sigh and a 6-year-old slump.

This is a tricky place for a mother. Mama Bear wants to gather him up in her arms and reassure him that no, he doesn’t have to go to school ever again, and she promises to march into that teacher’s office and let her have it. His poor little ears didn’t hear her, doesn’t that count for anything?

But practical old Mother Annie is poignantly conscious of all the times she calls Mr. Harrison from three feet away, yet is met with a similar case of selective deafness. As much as I want to believe he didn’t “hear” her, I know that kid way too well. He wanted to go to recess, so he went.

And suddenly there it is, one of those beautiful parenting moments we all wait for. You get to sit your kid down and give them the undiluted truth about life: When you screw something up, as nice as running away might sound, it never, ever fixes the problem. (Especially where God is concerned. And quite frankly, his soul is way more important to me than his math homework.)

As far as life goes, good times are like cotton candy. If that’s all you eat, you’ll have a mouth full of fillings and a lovely case of Type II Diabetes. You’ve got to get your lentils and broccoli if you want to grow up and be healthy and strong.

The thing we must remember is that now and then, we screw up. You tell a fib, or yell at someone.

Sometimes you find yourself slashing away at some poor unrepresented soul behind their back, never consciously thinking about how it might hurt them. Whatever it is, we all do it, and it’s the reason we’re here — to learn, to grow, to try a little harder today than we did yesterday.

Even the best of us makes mistakes, but even the worst of them are redeemable. And like I told my boy, no matter what he might have done at school, it can be repaired. And it doesn’t matter how mad his teacher or his peers or his parents might sometimes get, in the end, Jesus still loves him, period.

(And yes, he’s going to school tomorrow.)

See more at Annie's blog at regardingannie.com