I mean -- BIG TIME!!!
What did I do?
One of my children got really emotional yesterday. A good parent, a parent who is centered will, when faced with a very emotional child, be a safe place for that child. A parent will let that child express the emotions and frustrations and not take it personally. A centered parent will keep all that volatile emotion within the confines of this interaction and actually see it a bit diffused after the episode.
I wasn't a good parent last night.
Not at all.
I not only did none of that, but I allowed the emotions to affect me big time; I took them personally; and then proceeded to tell my child how wrong this child was and how this child should see how hard I have worked to make this individual happy.
And then it gets even worse.
I took these emotions and let them affect the entire family!
We were already dealing with a plugged toilet (and of course when there is a toilet that doesn't work everyone needs to use it) and some bad customer service I had to take care of in town. By me taking on these emotions the entire household was an absolute mess!
But today there was a beautiful sun in the sunrise.
And today God's mercies are new again (you can find that truth in Lamentations 3).
AND, I have realized something I am going to do. Every morning for a while I am going to read 1 Corinthians 13 -- the love chapter. All our interactions with others, how we treat others, should resemble the characteristics of love found in this chapter. If they don't, then we are wrong ( no matter what the others did). We are responsible for ourselves and our actions. How we act is not dependent on someone else -- we need to love and do the right thing always.
"If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.
"And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.
"Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails; but if there are gifts of prophecy, they will be done away; if there are tongues, they will cease; if there is knowledge, it will be done away. For we know in part, and we prophecy in part; but when the perfect comes, the partial will be done away. When I was a child, I used to speak as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.
"For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known.
"But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love."
1 Corinthians 13