The Broken Glass

This weekend my kids were playing with a balloon at their Gigi's house.  I told them to stop and they both set down but my daughter continued to throw the balloon up within her grasp but behind her was a large glass vase that she inadvertenly tipped over when playing with the balloon and the vase shattered.   My reaction was that I had JUST told her not to play with the balloon, yet she still did so and she broke something that didn't belong to us.  So I did raise my voice and was not to happy with her.  

Then tonight we had just finished watching a movie together and I was doing laundry and checking email when I heard a crash.  I yelled, "What have you broken?" from the office and I was pretty upset to find a softball went through one of the glass panes in the door!  I was pretty upset and began the questioning and the "How could you throw a real softball in the house?" And somewhere in it all, I stopped. I looked at my kids and saw true repentance in their eyes along with great fear of what was to happen next.  God was showing me there was a better way to handle this and so instead of picking up the glass, I told the kids to have a seat on the couch.  I came back to the office to collect my thoughts before going to the bedroom to bring in my Bible.  I set between the kids and asked them if they knew how many times the Bible talked about Obedience. We then counted in the back of the Bible the scriptures listed that talked about obeying and there was 81 scriptures!  We decided obeying must be pretty important to be talked about that many times.  We read Ephesians   6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor your father and mother"--which is the first commandment with a promise-- 3 "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."  We talked about why this commandment came with a promise and why it's important to listen to your parents and when we were done the kids offered to pay for the window, told me they should go to bed for the night, and listed several punishments they believed fit the crime. I never once mentioned any consequences for their actions, they did.

I realized as I tucked them both into bed how much they matured and I realized there was a lasting change in them but more importantly a lasting change in me.  On Sunday, all I did was make my daughter feel bad for what she had done and by her actions today it was clear she learned nothing from it but tonight with a different attitude, I got much different results. Tonight she wasn't sorry for breaking the glass, she was sorry for a long line of defiance that led to breaking the glass.  There's a big difference between the two. And my son hadn't thrown the ball but he stood by his sister and owned up to his part in it and wanted to pay half for the window.  Neither one of them tried to blame the other.  They had each others back.

True repentance isn't just about being sorry for what you have done or caused, it's being sorry for everything that has led you down that path where the wrong choice was made.   My daughter may have shattered the glass in the door, but the disobedience she has been encased in also cracked.  We decided that studying all 81 scriptures of obedience is something we should begin doing each day to shatter the disobedient tendencies. It may be a small setback since the house is on the market to sell but it was a step-up in seeing how we all handled the situation.