Don't Let the Little Stuff Bug You
Hello! It’s been awhile since we chatted around the kitchen table, there’s lots going on at Lilystitches! Come in and sit down and take a minute to catch your breath.
Though summer hasn’t had its official start yet, the atmosphere surely seems to be singing its arrival. One of my grandsons was stung by a bee.
Fortunately, he doesn’t have any kind of allergy to bee stings so my daughter was able to calm him down with just a few gentle words and a hug and off he scampered to, most likely, get stung again because he was playing in clover. My daughter didn’t make a big deal about it and therefore, neither did my grandson. It was a pleasure to watch the whole scenario unfold. She’s taught him that things in life are going to be uncomfortable and inconvenient sometimes so when things like this happen, he isn’t surprised, but instead is learning to be prepared to accept them and to cope with life when it doesn’t treat him so good.
Creeping and crawling mini-beasts of summer are a good resource to teach your kids such things. I’ve been captivated, like never before, with the bugs of summer. Last week my daughter-in-law sent me some pictures of my granddaughter, whom my son affectionately calls his “viper in a diaper”, holding a fresh worm - which, I’m pretty sure, made my daughter-in-law want to scream and run. Alas, she stayed the course and took pictures of her sweet little girl holding her worm – fresh out of the wet dirt after a big Southern rainstorm. I couldn’t help but smile when I looked at the picture as I thought about my own summers in the South.
Oh, the bugs and worms and frogs my brother and cousins and I used to catch when we were little. Fireflies on a summer night can’t be beat when you’re a sweaty little kid running in the twilight after a long, hot day with a big Mason jar open to catch the fiery creatures. Those nights didn’t seem like much then, but when I remember them now, I can see my grandparents on a big wooden swing, drinking sweet tea while we caught our fire for the night. Hmm. Hmm. June bugs were another favorite, all that beautiful green and shiny stuff on the wings… Dragonflies hold their own fascination for me, like they do lots of people - in spite of the fact that they emerge from the water. Ewww; and even though they sting, I can’t leave bees out of my summer scenario. They bring such terror don’t they? People of all ages and both genders can lose all their composure when a bee gets after them, it’s actually pretty amusing to watch sometimes.
I remember when I was about four years old, we lived in the parsonage of Deep River Friends Meeting where my dad was the pastor.
We had just walked home from church on a Sunday afternoon and anticipated taking a nap (my brother and I hated naps of course). When we arrived at the house, we dutifully trudged upstairs, though bitter at the whole idea, and walked into the oversized bedroom that we shared, to find a swarm of bees in the window. The bees didn’t cover the window, but they surrounded it on all sides to be sure. From the point of discovery I remember nothing but mayhem; screaming and running and panic, but when I called my mom yesterday to verify my recount of that day, she laughed dismissively and said “I don’t remember, Lisa”. Her answer momentarily stopped me; it didn’t compute that such a trauma could go un-remembered. Still, I was ready to acquiesce to her memory. Because, speaking of suffering, for those of you who have grown kids you’ve probably learned from your own story-telling that it’s best to have all the little details of a story neatly laid out in your mind so correction doesn’t become necessary. My grown kids sit at the kitchen table during mine and my mom’s story telling sessions like they’re at a tennis match, heads swiveling back and forth, watching to see whose memory will prevail, mine or their grandma’s, so I thought it best to pursue the truth ahead of time. As I offered up my own memory, and heard my mom’s more accurate recount of the bee story, the final tale ended up being that the swarm hadn’t been inside the bay window crawling on my brother’s bed waiting with purpose to attack us when we walked in. Ha! Rather, the swarm was outside the window, apparently looking for their Queen bee (which we found two weeks later on a windowsill in the basement). Apparently, I also hadn’t stood there screaming while my parents ran into the room frantic to save us, as my mom reminded me that screaming hysterically wasn’t something of which she was ever tolerant.
Finally, I remembered being shooed off to my Grandma’s for the night because of my parents’ fierce concern for my brother and me; but my mom said we stayed in our room that night because there was no reason to go to my grandma’s. Go figure.
I wasn’t coddled when tough things came up; I also wasn’t made to suffer – that would have been wrong. Instead, I was taught through words and actions that God was in control of all aspects of my life and that suffering would just happen sometimes – and that He would be there for me when it did because He cares about my hurts, big and small. In his book My Utmost For His Highest, Oswald Chambers says “The people who do us good are never those who sympathize with us, they always hinder, because sympathy debilitates…when we accept sympathy the reflex feeling is ‘Well, God is dealing hardly with me…’ “ That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be compassionate toward your kids or your spouse or your friends, just take care to administer compassion without allowing self-pity to take over. Compassion lends itself to coming alongside someone for support whereas sympathy, I think, lends itself more to “fixing for”.
Let your kids play with bugs and dig up worms! Open the windows and lay out the picnic blanket. If they get stung or bit, kiss their hurt and use that opportunity to illustrate to them that a little pain isn’t the end of their world, but rather a journey into it.
As they grow, they’ll have learned to handle tough times better because they’re prepared for them to come rather than surprised that they’ve arrived. In the end, maybe it’s better to spend more time coaching our kids through things rather than protecting from everything. See you in a few days!
