I've spent hours with my kids reading through story after story of tough love and creative parenting. We've often found ourselves howling with laughter over the ingenious ways people have dealt with their kids' bad judgment calls. I, personally, have reveled in the sweet reassurance that I'm not alone in my childhood foolishness resulting in self-inflicted and well-deserved humiliation and embarrassment.
I could easily picture my own mom doing each of the things I've read, and always not far from our minds was my own poignant, up close and personal experience with tough love.
My kids savor being regaled with stories of their daddy's and my childhood. Mine was boring compared to my mischievous, farm-raised husband's, but fortunately for them, my mom was great at creative parenting so I'm not entirely without fodder for good stories.
I remember rarely getting spanked as a kid. I'm convinced spanking was for amateurs as far as my mother was concerned. She never wasted a teaching opportunity which, come to think of it, probably contributed greatly to my innate propensity to choose well. Just "the look" was enough to make both my sister's and my eyes widen in apprehension and our hearts skip a beat. Woe be unto us if she actually had to say or do something to correct us!
And, you know what, we loved her for it. Our boundaries were clear, and there's something so sweetly comforting in that to a kid.
I learned early on that while being good all the time was hard, it was far easier than facing the inevitable consequences of wrong choices. I got away with exactly nothing, and if my mom didn't know about something, I knew it would go a lot easier on me if I told her about it than if she found out some other way, so I often ended up being my own nark.
I've always been a peace-seeking people-pleaser so I didn't get into trouble often, but when I did it was a doozy.
I was nine years old, knowing little to nothing of God and the Bible, smack dab in the middle of a Chama, New Mexico winter, when I was taught the lesson of a lifetime; one that would make me passionate for truth and the defense of it no matter the cost, with increasing intensity, for the rest of my life.
I attended public school at the time with one teacher, and about 30 classmates.
When the teacher left the room she nearly always put a friend of mine in charge, and for good reason. Eric was nothing if not responsible.
With him at the helm, a few kids might whisper back and forth, pass notes and generally do whatever they wanted quietly at their desks while the teacher was gone, but when she walked back into the room all was as it should be.
That particular day, for reasons I will never fully comprehend, I chose to resent that she never picked me. If I had been honest with myself, I would have acknowledged I didn't even want the responsibility. If she had asked me, I probably would have thanked her but asked if Eric could do it instead.
When my mom picked me up from school that day, and asked how my day had gone, in my incredibly skewed, and wrongly perceived rancor, I told her a lie.
I said that the teacher had put Eric in charge of the class, again, and I couldn't figure out why. Nobody listened to him, and he let the kids bounce off the walls. Then, as if I weren't already in deep enough, I told her that he, himself, had been jumping off his desk, and throwing pencils across the room.
She asked a few more questions, I gave answers consistent with my ill-advised story, and then ... and then ... and THEN she called his mom.
Oh, yes she did.
That short phone call seemed to last a sweet forever, the certainty of a myriad of distasteful consequences looming ominously before me. I had time to consider many different possibilities during those, in reality, fleeting moments.
"The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment" ~Proverbs 12:19
My mom confidently told Eric's mom all that I had said. Her honest response of being unable to imagine her son doing such a thing being completely justified, she graciously assured my mom she would talk to him and call her right back.
In the interim, I tried backtracking.
"It probably wasn't as bad as I remember."
"He probably won't see it that way."
"Do you really think he'll admit to doing something like that?"
All the while knowingly digging myself deeper still.
"A lying tongue hateth those that are afflicted by it; and a flattering tongue worketh ruin." ~Proverbs 26:28
Of course, she called back and said, according to Eric, what I had said never happened.
My blood ran cold when my mom called me by my full name as she hung up that phone. I knew I was in for it. The next few hours are indelibly imprinted upon my memory.
She bundled me up to my eyeballs in my winter gear, and told me I was going to walk across town, alone, and apologize to his face for lying about him.
I would have much preferred a spanking.
When I was 6 or 7 years old, I had watched the movie "Adam" about John Walsh's son being kidnapped, and ever since had been deathly afraid that would be my fate. For that reason alone, to me, this consequence was a fate worse than death.
I was crying when I started out, but it was so freezing cold my tears froze to my face. I stopped that in a hurry, and tried to focus my energies on walking as fast as I could instead.
It was a miserable, long, cold walk all the way to his house and back.
Dogs kept coming out of nowhere to bark at me, causing my already knotted stomach to knot tighter still.
Trying to be aware of my surroundings, I kept turning in circles as I walked to make sure no one was following me or about to snatch me away in their car. One's peripheral vision is decidedly limited in kids' cinched tight hooded winter coats.
Chama is a small town, and I was safe though. I didn't know it then, but my mom and his, were in contact over the phone as to my whereabouts. It was only about one mile to their house and back; ample time though for me to recognize, regret, and repent, in stark, vivid detail of every aspect of my utter foolishness.
I will never forget Eric and his mom trying not to laugh when I showed up on their doorstep. I'm sure I was a sight, but how I resented their not taking it at all seriously! I walked back home and into my house repeating over and over that I would never, ever, EVER lie again. Boy, did I mean it, with all of my heart.
I thought that was the end of the consequence, but I was wrong. After my winter clothes were peeled off, my mom sat me down at the table, and proceeded to lecture me for what seemed like hours. I interrupted her at one point and asked, "Will you please just spank me so this can be over?" No way, jose. That would have been too easy.
I didn't dare let my eyes glaze over either. I forced myself to listen intently to her every last word.
I gave her my word I wouldn't lie again, and I've mostly kept it, I think, especially to her! Whenever my conscience pricks me over discrepancies in details or exaggerations, all those horrible feelings of regret and humiliation come back in a rush, making me quick to apologize.
How could I have known then that twenty-seven years later I would experience such an ironic *juxtaposition of this very scenario?
All those years ago, before I was a believer, I was believed by a loved one when I inexcusably lied about a friend.
Today, for more than two years now, I am accused of lying for telling a tough love truth, a truth far worse than any lie I could or would make up, about a friend. This, some 27 years after becoming a Christian, despite the fervent love for truth I have because of just such a lie. It makes no sense.
Life is funny like that sometimes, though, isn't it?
But God? He knows. He values the truth so much more. His consequences for lying are terrifying and sure. Far worse than what seemed "a fate worse than death" to me in my childhood naivety.
But the experience has been such a gift all the same. It has proven and made this verse all the more meaningful and true in my life:
"I hate and abhor lying: but Thy law do I love." Psalm 119:163"Lord, magnify our love for truth."
{What about you, friends? Do you have a tough love story that has shaped and molded you into the person you are today? Please, do share! My kids and I would so love to hear.
And, if you enjoy a good, tough love laugh, do yourself a favor, and go to Jen Hatmaker's Facebook page. Scroll down to her June 16th post and read the comments.}
*Juxtaposition ~ defined as "two similar things being seen or placed close together with contrasting effect."
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