As Happy As your Least Happy Child
A time-warp story from June 21, 2023
At church I heard something that made me laugh and shake my head. The laugh was total irony. It was a stab of truth. “You are only as happy as your least happy child, and if you have a quiver full, sometimes you may be both happy and sad at the same time.”
I laughed inside because the three days before this Sunday and that particular morning, I had been feeling stabbed repeatedly by three teenagers. Periodically the younger ones would take turns deciding to pretend to be just like them and that was not encouraging.
I wondered about that saying. When the girls wound my heart with unthinking words or “mean” things, I have to remind myself of something I learned a while back that helps: people tend to show their innermost feelings like aggression, anger, desperation, irritation in a place they feel safe because humans in their deepest parts fear rejection. When they know you won’t reject them or stop loving them, they feel safe and as such, end up showing their “worst side” to you.
I understand that their sharp words or actions are reflecting something hurting them. I will often try to find that something; usually not at that time as experience has taught me that when I say, “are you okay?” or “what’s bothering you?” when they are upset, I usually get a snapped, “nothing!” or “you!” which doesn’t help. I’ll often try to broach the “what is hurting you?” question in a less explosive time. Sometimes, it’s something small that felt huge at the time. Other times it’s something that needs more discussion.
But always, when I they hurt my heart with words, I pray for theirs and now remember something else: it is true that my smile can be on for Thea and I’m happily talking about her make believe lego world while we build our respective houses but my heart is sad because I know the “snap” was really something hurting their heart. So yes, there’s a part of my heart that is always feeling the hurt from my least happy child even though another part is engaging with smiles at another – sometimes there’s four or five of us in a game yet one’s hurting; I totally feel those “both feelings at the same time.”
I wondered about God and how we hurt his heart yet He always loves us. He knows when we are hurting but unlike mothers and fathers, who don’t always know what is in the heart of their child, God knows our heart and sees everything within us. Thank you, God, for loving us! Thank you for giving us a heart for our children!
Thank you for reading.
Type at you later,
~Nancy Tart