It’s the weekend. Saturday. The youngest son (YS) is up at the crack of dawn. His older brother & roommate, our middle son (MS), is still sleeping – a hard sleep, since he didn’t “go to sleep” until 5:50am. The night before he had gone to a “Night of Prayer & Bible Study” at our church. He got home around 12:30am, and immediately retreated to his room for some uninterrupted XBox 360 game play. When nature woke me before day break this morning, I saw the silenced television images flashing in his darkened room. Still awake. Still playing a game. So, today at 2pm, our MS was still sleeping. Now you know why.
YS: “Mom, you wanna see what I did in our room?”
“Yes, but be quiet. [MS] needs to sleep longer.”
YS: “I wrote [MS] a note on my easel, and put it in the doorway so he’ll see it when he gets up.”
“Oh, that is very nice!”
The note read: DEAR [MS],
I AM SORRY FOR GITTING A ADITUDE ALL THE TIME
AND FOR ENOYING YOU ALL THE TIME. DO YOU WANT
TO PLAY THE GAME WITH ME TODAY? I LOVE YOU AND
I HOPE YOU WILL FORGIVE ME.
There is a five year age difference between our youngest two sons, and our MS is teetering on the tween/teen line, so he doesn’t always have the patience needed when dealing with our YS, who is an 8-year old. And at the same time, our YS doesn’t always understand it when MS needs his quiet, his space. As MS’s social calendar is beginning to take form, the weekends for him are not always about staying home and “playing” anymore. He’s got an active schedule with the youth group at our church now that he’s a middle-schooler, and every other weekend he’s away from our home for visitation with his father. Our YS is having to learn to deal with the feelings of not having his older brother’s dedicated attention all the time. Last night when MS told YS that he was going to church, YS was not at all happy about that. Apparently he made faces at his older brother, and picked up the footstool and threw it around the den in anger that his older brother was leaving. I didn’t witness this, but instead, learned of it in the car ride to take MS to church. When I returned home, I did not discuss it with YS, but instead, involved him in some outdoor gardening work that his dad and I were finishing up. Distraction. It’s a friend, sometimes.
After reading the sweet easel note that YS had composed and written for his older brother to see, my heart melted.
“YS, were you apologizing because of the way you acted toward your brother last night before he went to church?”
YS: “Well, not just for that, but kind of for the way I’ve been annoying (enoying) him for the last 5-6 years.”
“Oh, you felt like you needed to say you were sorry, huh?”
YS: “Yes. I love him and I don’t want him to be mad at me.”
“You know why you felt like you needed to write him that note?”
YS: [shrugs]
“Did you have this little tugging, this feeling that you needed to do it because it was the right thing to do?”
YS: [smiling] “Yes.”
His daddy: “That’s because you have Jesus in your heart and you wanted to do the right thing.”
“You know how proud your daddy and I are because you did that? There’s someone who’s even more happy than we are. You know who that is?”
YS: “Uh-huh. Jesus and God.”
“That’s right! You did something, and when you thought about it, you knew it wasn’t right and you needed to say you were sorry. You were doing what Jesus would want you to do! That’s what it means to obey Jesus. We’re so proud of you.”
the toenail 