Love, Life and Tantrums

When my boy gets tired, he becomes inflexible, like many of us do. So I shouldn't have chosen a day when he was tired to announce that he would be wearing new swimming trunks to his lesson that day. All hell broke loose. Screaming, shouting, tears, snot, gagging - the full works. After he calmed down and put on the new trunks, we set off for the pool. There was another tantrum in the changing room about taking his shoes off. And then over the putting on of the swimming cap, which strains our relationship on the best of days. More snot and flailing limbs, whilst other children politely lined up for the lesson.  

As I walked him round to the poolside and handed him into the care of his teacher, the signs were not looking good. The little crumpled brow, the hands drawn nervously up to his chest, the little stutter in his feet, as though they half had a mind of their own and were trying to get back to the changing rooms. I did my best stern face and told him to pull himself together and get on with it. I am weary of having to do this, I thought, to deal with his tantrums and stubbornness. 

Once I got up into the gallery, I was not impressed with what I saw. There was my boy, stubbornly refusing to get into the pool. Feelings of mortification set in. Each time his teacher tried to coax him in, my boy turned his back on her with dramatic flair, and chose to sit facing the wall, knees pressed up against his chest and head down. My mortification turned into exasperation, and then after a further 25 minutes, into anger. I started mentally rehearsing how I would greet him afterwards: Would it be silent disapproval? Let him feel the burning of my anger in the silence of the car ride home? Or the "Get. Into. The. Car...NOW!" routine - with disgust written all over my face and in my tone. I was so angry I wanted to say mean things, words I would have meant in the moment but sorely regretted later. 

I begged God to help me - 'Help me! I want to be compassionate to this boy, but I can't! I want to hurt him, so he will get a taste of my anger and share in the shame he is causing me. And yet deeper still I don't, I don't. Please don't let me hurt him. I gave birth to this child, I love him. Please God, you are going to have to literally put some words into my mouth to speak to him. If you don't I will pour out a torrent of hurtful, angry words on him, and he will be wounded. Please, give me the words to say to him.'

As I watched on, my boy finally made it into the pool. He did a couple of lengths of backstroke, bobbing around as though he's in the Dead Sea, propped up as he is with his 8 armbands (he's nervous of sinking - we're trying to get it down to 6). The lesson over, I went to meet him, unsure about what was going to come out of my mouth, or what look would be on my face.

I wrapped the towel round him and lifted him onto the bench, and my mouth said:

"What do you think I should say to you?"

He looked at me and beamed. "Oh Mummy, I think you should say, 'Well done!'", said my boy.

I think I only managed to say, "Why?"

"Because I got into the pool even though I really really really didn't want to." And he looked up at me, his face full of pride.

For 25 minutes my little boy had been doing battle with his emotions, and after all that time he won. He overcame, and got into the pool. He had experienced a tremendous victory. And for 25 minutes, I had been fuming, with angry words swirling around in my mind about how he was being pathetic and ridiculous. I thought I knew what was going on, but my boy had just opened a door for me into his heart and mind, and shown me what was really there. 

So, "Yes", I said, "you did. You got into the pool even though you really, really, really didn't want to. Well done." 

"Mummy", he said at bedtime, "You made me happy to today. You said kind words." I felt like my heart might implode. I knew he had expected me to be angry. 

The incident opened my eyes to something. I had forgotten how much each human heart longs for another to share in its emotions, just to be there side by side, without judgement. It made me want to do this again, to just sit with my boy and feel what he is feeling, before I start teaching and problem-solving. What a profoundly beautiful thing, for the experienced adult to relinquish the position of power and 'knowing', and to go down to the level of a child, following the lead of an inexperienced little person. 

Why does this stir me so deeply? Because I experienced something that afternoon that led to love and led to life. There is something paradoxical and topsy turvy about the big powerful ones who know, being led by the little, weak ones who don't know, just sitting and feeling what they feel. Not asserting, dominating, judging; not an insistence on their own way, but listening, empathising, being fully available. 

I know I am close to the ways of God when I get ambushed by a topsy turvy way of doing things. After all, this is a God who likes to be found in earth, not heaven. A God who hides but calls out unceasingly. A God who would rather camp out with people than live alone in palaces in the sky. A God who won't be drawn to engage in strong-armed, domineering tactics of power, but instead sits with us, listening, refusing to judge. Like my boy, we thought he was going to be angry with us, but he wasn't. We thought he was going to judge us, but he didn't - he brought life and love instead. He doesn't steam roll over life, but dwells within it, like yeast in a dough: Rising, rising, rising, bringing life and love from the inside, wherever we will let it, like in the boiling hot changing room of a swimming pool, on a Thursday afternoon.