Mean People Suck

We are camping this weekend (well P and the kids are camping. I am going and hanging out with them during the day and coming home and sleeping in my bed). This afternoon, G and I decided to take a walk down the reservoir to play in the water.  He held the dog leash and I carried the play buckets. G ran ahead. We had not gotten it through his head yet not to cut through people campsites, and once again he ran through an RV site. It went a little badly. I was a ways back but I could see the dog pulling him over (over the metal picnic bench, ouch) and I could hear an adult yelling.  I could see G trying to regain control of the dog and I was trying to hurry myself to help. But waddling is not an efficient form of movement.
Still I hear an adult yelling.
When G makes it back to me, I asked him if someone was yelling at him. He told me "Yes, she was screaming for me to get out of her campsite."
Quickly, I wonder if I would be yelling at a child who had done the same thing. The obvious answer I come up with is no. I have yelled at my kids. I have probably yelled at your kids. But I would not yell at a stranger kid who lost control of his dog at my campsite.  While I am trying to decide if I should take my bad ass 8 month pregnant self over to confront her, she comes out and looks at me and raises her arms in a "What the heck" motion.
So I tell her calmly and without yelling (but with heavy snarkasm) what I think- "I apologize that my child acted like the 7 year old that he is, but it is not appropriate for you to yell at a child like that".  I am pretty sure that is all I said,  but l am 8 months pregnant.
We walked away.
This created a lot for G and I to talk about. I asked him if he was afraid. He told me that if he was still a "little kid that it would have made him cry" but that it did hurt his feelings. He told me it was "kinda weird" how I talked to the lady.  We played in the water for a bit and went back and he told P what happened. So we talked some more.
I figured out what he thought was weird about what I said. We teach our kids that to ignore mean people- G hit it on the head this afternoon when he said "someone being unkind to you does not mean that you have to be unkind back" and that it true. But I pointed out that she was not unkind to me, but to a child. P told him that it is okay to be firm with people. P pointed out to him that if it upset the mean lady so much that she could have come talked to me about it, but screaming at kids is not okay.
 (apparently P thought I handled it perfectly at the time and that Jesus would not go back there without kids and be "firm" a little more aggressively and/or light fire crackers under her trailer in the middle of the night)
I pointed out to G that that I did yell or call her name (he wanted examples- he came up with poopy head. Not really the name I was thinking when it happened). I wondered if I should have just kept my mouth shut but thought about it more and realized that my kids NEED to see me handle stressful aggressive situations calmly but firmly (there is that word again). While my kids need to learn to walk away, they also need to learn how to deal with bullies and how to stand up for someone being bullied especially when a much larger person is bullying someone who is smaller and weaker. This is one of the few times G has seen me handle conflict with a stranger and I think it is good for him to see that mommy doesn't yell, she doesn't call names but she does not let people abuse her or her family.

Untitled Thoughts

Yesterday morning we woke up to an email of a newspaper article about an old friend- he had committed a heinous crime, unwittingly but nonetheless, a crime that we could find no excuse for.  We have not spoken to this man for many years but it was someone in the past that we had seen everyday for many years.
I thought about his crime all day- and last night as I laid in bed, I could not help but imagine what he must be feeling. I am in no way excusing his behavior nor negating the pain of the victim but I realized that I had never empathized with the perpetrator end of crimes.
How does it feel to be in jail for an unknown amount of time, knowing that you have done a terrible terrible thing. I am not talking about the Ted Bundy criminals- I am speaking of people who in a moment choose to do something that will alter their lives forever in a extremely negative way. I told P that now I know how friends and family end up on news with shocked faces and words that sound like excuses but are really just more shock.
And jail is not the only punishment- How about our own conscience? Some crimes would be very difficult to live with- the guilt and shame- the feeling that one is unredeemable. Although this man is not a saint, I knew that at that moment he must just want to die, knowing what he did.
And I thought to myself- "What on earth do I tell this man?"
Then I realized.
We tell him about Jesus of course.
He knows that we are Christians.  But I think that will mean something new to him as he sits in jail, most likely isolated from most people who are disgusted by his crime.
So we are planning our letter to him (and trying to track him down). We might be the only people to tell him that there is redemption- that God can forgive him. And we can do that without excusing any of his behavior or sin. I realized this morning what a beautiful relationship Christianity is- As humans there is a limit to our forgiveness to one another. Certain acts/ sins cause us to "write a person off" in our brain. That is not true with God. We are all black hearted sinners in his eyes and he loves each of us. There is no sin too big for God to redeem, and as I thought this, I realized that meant that there was no sinner so sinful that I should not share God's redeeming love with them.
I guess this is how people end up in prison ministry.