Tuesday, January 4, 2011

it's good the cuss word cop doesn't have a billy stick........

This morning CB was taking a bath while I was getting Skylar ready to go for her dental appointment for sealants. He was going over things that made "Jesus cry"......or rain fall from the sky, Jesus' tears.

I relayed that I always thought that rain was Jesus overflowing his bath water.

To this Sky responded that my thinking could not be right because Jesus was perfect in every way. He wouldn't be dirty and surely not forgetful in turning off His bath water.

CB tells us when people use "t words" it makes Jesus cry.

A- Well, what are "t words?"

CB- Like cuss words or saying "Oh my God" instead of saying "gosh."

S- Cole you always say Oh my God.


CB- No I don't Sky!

S- yes you do liar

A- Sky!  Really?!

S- Well he is a liar and he does use God's name in vain.

.......backtracking in my mind a bit......

Over the holidays we were at a neighbors house for a get together.  Sky called another adult out for using a cuss word...like, damn or something.

Sky is the cuss word cop. She is violent too...if she had a billy stick it would be bad.  The cuss word cop comes from part of her OCD stuff that makes me want to pull my hair out strand by strand with a pair of tweezers some days.  She hears a cuss word then thinks bad thoughts, then spends all day to a couple of days confessing that she has been thinking about the foul word EVERY TIME IT CROSSES HER MIND! Her medication ramps up her OCD issues at times and the confessing constantly is tedious. I'll save this rant for another day.

So when the cuss word cop called out the offending adult. I was embarrassed.  I was embarrassed a little because it came across as my child is calling out an adult on their behavior. It appeared disrespectful in the whole of the situation...especially in another persons house.

But the truth be told... why do adults need to swear in front of children?....or at all?

A Methodist pastor friend of ours said to me over a couples dinner many years before both couples had children, I may have been pregnant...when haven't I been pregnant....he said, "I always felt like people used cuss words when they couldn't think of a more clever word to use."

That really stuck with me.  I have conveyed that sentiment to my own children.  With so many wonderful words to choose from, why use the bad ones?

...but alas I still use them sometimes.  I use them most when I want to put a redneck, big, fat, exclamation point on a thought that conveys I mean business.

  Really? Do I mean business or just sound like a red neck?

Like, one day I was putting on a new shower head. I was up and down the ladder cause the dang thing would not loosen. I had to keep switching tools and getting plumbers tape and this and that & oh yeah what about this tool....up and down, up and down, on and on...every time I came down the ladder Zachary and Maysie were right under my feet, for crying out loud, I was stepping all over them...Why were they UNDER MY STINKING FEET  in the shower??

So.......I am coming down the ladder and I step on Zac's feet......

A- Will you please move your ASS??


Zac and May are shocked and look at each other but did not move.  Zac and I are face to face now in the shower.

Zac looks at Maysie then at me and says - Now you apologize to Maysie. (insinuating May is his ass)

We all start laughing and forget about it....except for Sky

She reminds me at the lunch table that she heard me say a cuss word in the shower and that I could surely have picked a more clever word, and did I ask God to forgive me?


I had been having an eventful morning. One of those days when things happen that shouldn't. Each thing you fix leads to something else that needs attention immediately and before you know it 4 hours has gotten by and what really needed to be accomplished hasn't happened yet and still needs to happen...only now your eating into the schedule 4 hours which puts you going to bed 4 hours later.

So Sky called me out and though she was correct, I lost my sanity in front of all my children at the lunch table and said

A- ASS, ass, ass, ass, ASS, ASS, ass, hell, hell, hell, damn and one more time for good measure, ASS!!

.......cricket, cricket.........

Zac busted out laughing.

May is hands over her mouth speak no evil and Sky is hands over her ears hear no evil.


Cole wants to know if he can have 3 cookies cause he finished all  his lunch.

I am like, gosh where'd that come from?  It was quite therapeutic...for about a minute or so.

M- Well now, that was quite pleasant.  I'm so glad we don't go to public school to learn language like that. I feel smarter already.
...................................................

So we're back in the bathroom with Sky calling out CB's ability to become a professional liar.

A- Skylie, Babe, you know you are absolutely correct to say we shouldn't use cuss words or lie or whatever.  But when you call people out on their sin in front of others two things happen. First, they get embarrassed and second they want to look for a fault in you to call out, so they can show others you sin too. Not that they want to hurt your feelings, but they are human and don't want to feel displaced.  Is the behavior right? No, but drawing a room full of people's attention to another person's sin isn't right either.

I reminded her of the incident at the neighbors house calling out the adult and that this was not the first instance of that either, that it came across as disrespectful more than trying to keep her mind clean.  Which all of us fully understand and outsiders don't.

I reminded her of the Bible story of the women who had been found with another man, like a boyfriend, while she was married. She was going to be stoned to death for this act.  The men brought her to Jesus to see what he would say about it.  Jesus wrote some words in the sand. Some say each man with a stone, ready to cast at the woman, viewed the words written by Jesus as his own secret sin...then Jesus stood and said, "Those without sin should cast the first stones."  When the girl looked up, there was not one man there waiting to stone her, for they all knew they were sinners, the same as she.  Jesus told her to go and sin no more.

I asked Sky if she was she perfect? Would she be able to cast the first stone?  Did she have a secret sin that only she ...and maybe me & Jesus knew about?

Sky expressed that she was glad the girl was not stoned to death and was able to live.  Sky affirmed that she knew she too, was a sinner. She knew she did some things that surely made Jesus unhappy. She understood that she had been casting stones casually and carelessly for her own sake.

I was so moved by her ability to understand this concept and readily accept this correction. I thought of how good God is to give us these moments with our children to teach in them in the way they should go. To be able to trust Him to know and understand what he has to teach our children through us as parents using the wisdom He gives us in His Book.  It takes my breath away, how good and right God is everyday and never failing.

I made a New Years resolution today to try really hard not to cast a bunch of stones casually and carelessly for the sake of myself.  I can't count the times Christ wrote my sins in the sand this past year and I kicked my foot over it so I wouldn't have to read it.

I'm done with that.




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