Wednesday, May 26, 2010

Forgiveness

I love how fiercely children love, and how easily they forgive.

My 10-month old has recently begun to recognize that when someone takes something away from him, he can merely let out a loud squawk, and the object will quickly be returned. His older siblings are slowly realizing that they need to treat him as a person and not just a "baby" any more. He immediately lets out a loud squawk - sometimes before anyone even touches him, but just gets close to him.

Today I watched my 7-year old attempt to distract him as he took a small toy from him. He squawked. My 7-year old hesitated and, with my encouragement, returned the toy. My 10-month old immediately went silent, smiled at my 7-year old, and gave him a look of forgiveness with his eyes.

I was touched as I thought of, on a small scale, how easy it is for my children to forgive each other.

My husband and I have been at each other lately - mainly due to The Move - not to mention lots of other reasons. (Plus, it's sometimes more fun when we have an audience, since we are staying with family right now.) Luckily, we do not take offense easily, or if we do, we forget about it almost immediately. But, every once in a while, we really do upset each other.

(One a side note: We seriously can't seem to get past The Couches. This may be fortunate, because every time we have an extra second to talk about anything important, we get stuck on The Couches and can't even get on to the other stuff that we may disagree with even more than The Couches. (I feel like a broken record, or like I'm on one.))

But, seriously, I am going to try to put more effort into loving fiercely and forgiving easily - especially during the next few months as we adjust to a new life with different: weather, work environment and schedule, home, neighborhood, school, weather, friends, climate, did-I-say-weather-already?, surroundings, etc. Being married to a medical resident sure keeps things exciting, anyway, but it could be a lot worse without forgiveness.

3 comments:

Carrie said...

It is SO true. They forgive so easily-- a moment later and they are playing again. No grudges. I should definitely learn from them

OH! I forgot to answer your camera question. I have an old school Nikon D200, but I'll be getting the D700 soon. It's necessary unless you are a professional, so I have heard the Nikon D40 is great for otherwise. My advice would be to het the 50mm 1.4 lens. You will never regret it.

Carrie said...

I meant it is NOT necessary unless you are a professional:)

cheri said...

it never ceases to amaze me how my child can forgive me for the things i have to do when i discipline him...