Family Brings Joy

First up, this post is not about guns.

To be honest, I went a long time without buying a toy gun for my son because I’m not a huge fan of “encouraging” violence.  My view has changed somewhat, but I don’t want to focus on whether guns are good or not.

No, this post is about a red letter day…yesterday.  It was a Tuesday.  It was March 19th.  If you look on the calendar you will not see a holiday typed there.  {The kids are home for Spring Break this week.}  Yet, it was a special day.  Why is that?  My kids, my two youngest, played together.  Your thinking, “so what? what’s the big deal?”  Well let me tell you, it IS a big deal.

There is 5 years difference between my son and daughter…14 and 9 (almost 15 and 10.)  Our son, I will call him J, was the baby for a long time.  He has quite the animosity against his little sis, A.  It’s quite sad indeed that J would hold this feeling well into his teen years.  He constantly wishes A was a boy, that he had a brother.  It’s understandable being he’s the only boy besides his dad in the house (dad works a lot so he’s not here all that much.)  It’s also understandable that he wished for a brother being that he doesn’t have many friends here.  I’ve mentioned before in earlier posts about him being bullied and told he looks like a monkey.  Oh how it makes my heart hurt.

Back to J & A.  They constantly fight.  I’ve touched on this in earlier posts as well.  Dinner time, prayer and scripture time are not always super enjoyable as we have to constantly referee the 2.  Many days I am grateful I can spread the kids out into different areas of the house so I can have a break from the bickering.

Hopefully, you have somewhat of a picture of what life is like with my 2 youngest kids.  It’s not all happily ever after in this family.  However, yesterday was heavenly.  J asked A if she wanted to shoot his BB gun {actually his dad’s} with him.  I thought to myself, “Oh no. Do I really want to allow this?”  Yesterday I was super tired.  We had gotten in from our trip to visit my Mom from the weekend at about 1 AM.  I was just grateful they wanted to be outside and hoped I had about 2 minutes of respite before one of them came in and told me of how the other had done this or that to them.  Next thing I know, several minutes had passed and J came in asking if I would take a photo of how they set up their shooting range in the back yard.  I immediately grabbed my camera and said a prayer of thanks in my mind to God.

Even though J is not pictured here, these photos represent true love on his part.  The fact that he shared the gun and let his sister shoot it is a miracle.  Not only did they do this together, they also played on the plasma cars and we all played catch with the baseball together.  The other reason it was a red letter day is because the TV was not turned on ALL DAY!  Oh how I love that!  I am very grateful for this special day.

Unfortunately, today it’s back to normal.  Lord, help me.

Happy First Day of Spring,