What’s with the inconsistency? And how do the ones closest to us hone in on it?
When I’m outside our home, I have a smile on my face and an encouraging word ready to roll off my lips like sugar. But when I walk into my domain–my home–I close that door behind me and all of a sudden I’m the queen.
I go into Mom Mode and start bossing people around.
“Why is the dishwasher not empty?!”
“Am I the only one who knows how to empty the trash can?!”
“Pick up this mess. We have a shoe bin. Put. The. Shoes. In. The. Bin!”
For some reason, the ones I love the most get the worst of me. I wouldn’t dare talk to my friends in such a tone, nor would a perfect stranger that frustrates me in the checkout line receive such angst as I save for my family.
My kids are very close in age. Three years separates three children. When they were all toddlers and younger, we were in constant correction mode. I was always trying to teach them. Sometimes I’d get a little edgy and lose my cool. Heck, who am I kidding? They’re all college-aged now and I still tend to find a lesson in everything, I still get edgy, and I still lose my cool sometimes.
Once in the crazy-mom-of-three-preschoolers/toddlers years I lost it. I don’t remember exactly why I lost it now, but I did. I had just yelled and lost my cool with them when the doorbell rang. It was a delivery man.
I opened the door, smiled, and greeted him with a hearty hello. I asked him how his day was going, signed for my package, and bade him farewell, and closed the door. Turning around, there were six little eyes on me. The middle one immediately questioned me, “Why are you so nice to the mailman and so mean to us?”
Oh my. There it was. My four-year-old called me out.
He was right. I had given the stranger a much better version of me than I had given my kids.
That tendency was common. My daughter noticed the conflicting moods, too. She was about the same age when she gave the same assessment.
She and her little preschool friend were in the backseat. I had given each a juice box and her friend squeezed it. (Oh. My. In our house one knew to NEVER squeeze the juice box.). The sticky contents of that purple box spilled onto her friend, her car seat, my seat, and the carpet. The poor little soul held her breath expecting to get in trouble. My daughter reassured her, “She won’t fuss at YOU. You’re not her kid.”
The tiniest little voice carried words that were weighty and went straight to my heart.
I still have a tendency to do that. I’m heavy on patience, kindness, gentleness and self-control when I’m out. Sadly though, those things get deposited at the door instead of flowing through me when I’m among my family.
The same is true of them, too.
You know how it works. We drop the kids off with the grandparents. We call to hear the report that the kids are great and getting along so well. They’re so polite and mannerly. “What a joy they are!”
Then we walk in the door and they begin to melt like lava. They begin bickering and complaining only to have the grandparents slap us with the cold hard truth, “I don’t know what happened. They’ve been so good all day!”
School was the same way. Their report cards touted outstanding citizenship, but they fell apart at home. They lost their tempers. They fought and scrapped and complained.
Why is that? Why do we save our angst for the ones we love the most?
Charles Spurgeon say, “What we are at home, we are indeed.” He’s right.
Maybe it’s because home is where we care the most. It’s where our own kind resides. The people who look like us, think like us, and act like us. We’re comfortable there. We can be ourselves–our real, messy selves.
God works in that mess, though. He took the broken family of Abraham and made an entire nation of Israel from it. They all had bumps and bruises along the way, but God made something beautiful from them. The deceit, adultery, idolatry, and even murder among them couldn’t thwart the plans of God.
Home is where we hurt deeply, but it’s also where we love deeply. And that’s what 1 Peter 4:8 encourages.
Love each other deeply, because love covers a multitude of sins.
So let’s take heart. Let’s own our mistakes–our tendencies to be nice to the outside world and nasty to the ones on the inside–and admit when we’re wrong. Let’s set our sights on the Jesus. On the big picture of what He wants to become and not the minute details of each incident that causes hurt.
It took the nation of Israel years to transform. They had years of blessing and years of destruction, but God saw fit to take that same family and place Jesus among them. They were ordinary people doing ordinary things. They had their hangups. They had their hurts. But they were His.
So are we.
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