More and More

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best..."

Our pastor has been hanging out in Philippians these past weeks and has challenged us to be reading through it daily. That's a very lofty goal - for me - and so I have been doing my best to spend some time with some portion of it each morning. The above excerpt is from chapter one and came across especially poignantly today.

One of our children has intense struggles with oppositional behavior. People have asked me to describe Oppositional Defiant Disorder; after all, most kids demonstrate some level of opposition, they all want their own way. It's difficult to put into words exactly what it's like to live with ODD in our house. And it's difficult for me to paint a negative and bleak picture of our child; besides the ODD and other diagnoses, this child has so much positive potential.

This morning this child got up, showered, and dressed for school. Then the distractions began:

while packing up her snack she had to examine a package that had been delievered to our house by mistake and was on the counter waiting to be taken to the neighbor's house - Daddy prompted her to keep moving and she growled in response;

she moved on and began to pack up her book bag while I directed a question to her and her sisters about some missing gum - she was immediately defensive and started yelling that she "didn't take it!";

we dropped the issue and she chose what cereal she wanted for breakfast, and while I poured it she poked holes in the bagel bag and bagels - at which point I told her to sit at the table;

she went to the table sat down and kicked her sister and then shoved her own chair away from the table - I told her to stand up and took the chair away and set her cereal in front of her so that she could stand to eat it (this is routine for us), she sat on the floor and muttered that she "was not going to have breakfast anyway";

turning my back and holding my tongue, I waited for her to stand up. When - after a few minutes - she didn't stand or calm down, I removed the cereal and told her to go and comb her hair. She yelled at me and them stomped toward the bathroom;

a few minutes later, from upstairs, came the loud complaints of one of the other girls. For some reason my struggling daughter decided to not comb her hair, but rather to go upstairs and throw clean laundry around her bedroom. She was called downstairs and eventually - after banging on the newel posts and railing and much stomping, grunting and growling - presented herself in the kitchen where I told her to stand at the table. She responded by following me around the kitchen, demanding her cereal.

My unspoken, but known, expectation was that she would stand at the table and then receive her cereal. She refused to obey and went back upstairs where there was slamming of doors and various items.

Several minutes later it was time to put on coats, gather instruments, and pick up book bags. From the kitchen I called for my child to come and get her violin and music, which she did as slowly as possible. On a whim, I checked her pockets and found the contraband - a container of lip gloss. At this point the other three kids were out the door and this one was refusing to pick up her violin, book bag, and coat.

Doing my best to say nothing, I "helped" her out the door: book bag hanging by one shoulder strap, violin in one hand, coat dragging along the ground with the other. With muttering and groaning she made it to the bus stop just as the other kids were getting on the bus - thanks goodness because I was trying to figure out how I would have handled it if she had missed the bus.

Okay, so back to the verse from Philippians... here's what I read this morning:

"And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in KNOWLEDGE and DEPTH OF INSIGHT, so that you may be able to discern what is best..."

Being a woman, a wife, a mom, my bent is toward loving with my heart, my emotions, my feelings. Seldom do I consider that I need more knowledge to love more completely. This verse speaks to me today, in the middle of a difficult, negative morning with my sweet girl. With more knowledge and insight I might "be able to discern what is best" for her.