The good news is that after implementation of the notebook idea, the internecine warfare is way, way down. The notebook has one entry, and it was a minor infraction. After the first day He Who Prefers Not To Be Named (But Don't Take This Moniker As A Comparison To Voldemort Please Because He Is A Very Nice BWPNTBN) came to me and said, "I wanted to show you that I could get through a day without being mean to my brothers."
Which is exactly what I was hoping for: that he would want to make a change.
The bad news is that this change has highlighted a weakness of mine, the constant NFL. NFL stands for Net Frustration Level, and its constancy is a phenomenon I first noticed when my second son was a toddler. Some days I would find him so easy to mother and his older brother would make me crazy. The next week they would switch roles. It was puzzling to me that I couldn't just enjoy them both at the same time.
Fast forward one lustrum: a couple of days into the new improved state of sibling affairs, I heard myself say nastily to that former toddler, "Stop that horrible whining!" BWPNTBN is suddenly easier to handle, and I am glowering and scowling at his younger brother instead. You'd think I could have grown up a little in the past five years, but apparently not: the NFL stays roughly constant, while the vent-ee changes around.
I was feeling pretty down on myself when I first realized this, but this afternoon our church had a beautiful prayer service for Divine Mercy Sunday. (Oh! And a friend of mine had a baby this morning, a little girl, and her middle name is Faustina -- what a lovely day to have a baby.) I picked Clemencia as my blog handle because it is my confirmation name, chosen fifteen years ago. As I was preparing to enter the Church, the mercy of God was real to me in a way it never had been before. I am Clemencia because it means mercy.
God's riches are manifold: he owns the cattle on a thousand hills; St. Paul talks about the immeasurable riches of his grace. But one of my favorite verses in the Bible is Ephesians 2:4-5 -- but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.
So: I'll work on the whining a little more gently, and I'll keep striving to bring down that NFL. BWPNTBN and I have agreed to sit down for a heart-to-heart tonight, in which I will apologize thoroughly and sincerely for one particularly awful thing I said while at wit's end. I wish I could be a more perfect mother for my children, but perhaps in our failings we can all learn a little more about mercy, offered and received.
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