Monday, March 1, 2010
I know I'm not perfect...
Sometimes I want to go postal at church. When I'm trying to teach to a group of women and there are some being so disruptive/chatty (or I'm leading music or something and they're whispering while looking at me, which makes me feel uncomfortable and automatically defensive and negative toward them), I want to start lecturing them about common courtesy (I guess it's not so common) or screaming or something. When I hear or see kids being totally loud and obnoxious and parents do nothing about it, letting their kids cause a huge distraction to everyone around, I want to go up to the kids and parent them. When adults and kids are rude, disrespectful, irreverent (yeah, I know "kids will be kids", but they learn proper behavior when their parents take time to teach them, or they learn to follow their parents' terrible example), pushy, obnoxious, loud, etc I think of Jesus throwing the moneychangers out of the temple and wish someone with more authority than me would set them straight. I know, I know... I need to work on being more Christlike and patient and loving and all that, but I just think of how my parents would never (now or when I was a kid) treat church like it was just some social parlor or let us kids act like we did on days other than Sundays or outside the walls of the sacred buildings. What kind of example are we setting?
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3 comments:
It used to be, when I'd see kids acting up in public, I wanted to go up and smack the kid. Now I want to go up and smack the parent(s).
That's a matter of opinion. Perhaps we need to expect more of ourselves and our children in settings that we consider sacred, holy, and places where we can feel the Spirit. It's sure hard to feel the Spirit amidst all the chaos. And I'm not talking about babies or *young* kids, but really, adults should know better!
Oh, TOTALLY agree!! Yes, we need to understand that children will be wiggly, somewhat noisy, messy, etc. However, the parents DO need to reel it in and take charge. We have one lady at church who allows her toddler to roam all over the place during Sacrament Meeting. It's very strange and distracting to watch her rounding him up every three minutes, right in front of the pulpit! Still, my kids are quite well-behaved and I'll still get disgusted looks from people...normally older women or young newlyweds with too-strong of opinions. Oh well. If my baby is too loud, I leave. I am the one in the hallway or in my car while everyone else gets to hear the lesson. Just one word of advice (to anyone)...if you're ever annoyed with someone's kids, try helping out. It just might be an exhausted, maxed out mom you are saving.
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