Patience is a virtue, right?

I believe that one of the reasons we have children is to remind us that temporal things don't matter. For nine years, we kept our table covered with clear plastic to protect it from food and fingerpaints--thus it was still pristine while all our chairs were demolished and sent out with this year's neighborhood cleanup.

Not long ago, we decided to ditch the ugly plastic. Our kids were mature now, right? Our baby has been in school for over two years now and knows how to treat things, right? Wrong! Our youngest child has a rather hot temper sometimes and has this habit of destroying things when she's angry--and she gets angry on a fairly regular basis. There are numerous examples of her explosive energy--like the hole in her bedroom wall, snapped-in-two pencils, and the countless almost-finished-but-not-quite-perfect art projects that have been shredded. (She can be a bit of a perfectionist too).

Well, I'm not even sure what made her mad this time, maybe she wasn't first-seated, but she had obviously dug a fork or knife into it and dragged it across the surface of the table for 2-3 inches. AACK! Luckily, John was there to calmly tell her that was unacceptable. I probably would have said something I'd regret later. Fortunately, I followed suit and told her how sad I was that she'd ruined something that's been nice for ten years.

She always feels badly for her misdeeds later, but what do you do when the damage is already done and often too bad to fix easily? She found me at my computer later that evening with a humble look on her face and two quarters in her hand--perhaps thinking that would fix things. We had a nice, long talk about how it never works to destroy things because you're mad. Lucifer destroys. The Lord creates. "Can't you find something constructive to do with all your angry energy?" We're focusing now on being creators vs. destroyers. As a visual image for her I quoted Pacha's wife when she gets upset in Emperor's New Groove: "I've gotta go wash something!"

It has made me think since then about President Uchtdorf's talk he gave last year called "Happiness, Your Heritage." He tells us that we can find joy in creating things. I believe it is because there is a real satisfaction in doing so. And like my seven-year-old (who I remind myself is still not accountable), only sadness can be reaped from anger because it leads to things that are destructive. And no joy can be found in following the adversary. How often do I get angry with my children because they're not quite perfect? How often do I wait it out until I'm calmer so I can deal with problems constructively? I have a lot of growing to do still, but slowly I'm learning that if I can be patient and deal with problems creatively rather than destructively, that my home is a happier place. I guess my baby and I will work on that together.

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