I am blessed to teach a Sunday school class of very sharp teenagers. It is a joy. This week we were talking about the importance of always learning. Education isn’t just about making money, it is about enriching the lives of yourself and others. There are so many ways to learn and, probably in conjunction with my previous post about spilling hot chocolate, I have been thinking of something we discussed in class.

Some people like to go through life saying, “This is just the way that I am. I cannot change.”

Really? You cannot change? That seems odd. That seems very much untrue. That seems very sad for them.

I have a lot of things that I would like to change… it takes effort and sometimes I don’t have much energy or discipline; sometimes I slip and slide and backslide, but I try and over the course of my lifetime I think that I see positive progress. I try to remember to pray for help and then feel very grateful that patience is an attribute of God.

When people say they cannot change they are often talking about things like, “I am too shy” or “I am not good at math” or “I just have a tendency to get angry.”

This tendency of responding with anger has been on my mind for a couple weeks. I was walking out of Costco behind a dad and his two children – it looked like a fun outing. His little daughter asked if they could get pizza and he responded that they had dinner waiting at home. But… he didn’t do it quite like that – he had more of an outburst which conveyed the idea that she was stupid to have every even asked for something like that when there was food at home. Yikes! It made me feel bad so I can just imagine how the little girl was feeling. He then smiled at the Costco employee who was checking his receipt. Now why couldn’t he have given that same smile to his little daughter and just reminded her that dinner was waiting for them?

Not long after that I was navigating my shopping cart down an aisle. A father and three of his sons were shopping together. Again – it looked like a fun outing. As I was about to pass them, one of the little boys was playing with his brother and landed in my path. This was not a big deal at all – I have spent many hours in grocery stores with more than three children. I smiled at the little boy until we were both struck with the fear of his dad turning on him – angrily telling him to get out of my way in a method that again conveyed the message that the child was very much in the wrong and not highly esteemed. Again I felt bad and yet there was the dad smiling at me. Now why couldn’t he have given that same smile to his son while helping him gently out of the middle of the aisle? He could even have given a reprimand but with some sort of love behind it.

Last week I heard from a friend about how she responds to a crisis with anger. She is angry that something has gone wrong in her life when she feels it is undeserved. “Wow,” I thought, “When life bumps into her she spills anger. That is like spilling some very HOT chocolate – and spilling it all over yourself (and others)?!”

As I listened to my friend and I watched these dads express anger that they seemed to reserve for their precious children – I felt that life was bumping into me and I was spilling sorrow.

With all of that in mind I was glad to see this post by my Navajo friend, Wally. He doesn’t know that we are friends, but my sister has shared his posts with me enough that I will occasionally watch him on my own. If you can get past the first moments of his Navajo words (which are cool), his English words always teach something worthwhile.

Later – this post has been on my computer for almost a week. I was thinking my kids might say that I got angry in grocery stores… but I don’t think so. Frustrated rarely, but they were really good kids. The day after typing I received what a I felt was a tender mercy – I had several errands to run and it seemed that everywhere I looked I saw the cutest families with kind, patient parents. It restored me.

This morning I got a Marco Polo from one of my daughters who had been to a work meeting with her team. For over an hour one of the men expressed his anger in a raised voice. She was shaken. He wasn’t angry with her, but she had to be in the same room. She said that she could count on one hand the times she had heard me raise my voice and I could say the same thing about my parents. I thought that I am very, very sorry for people who have been raised in an angry home and now struggle to overcome those tendencies. I hope that they are able to find that strength. I hope that we can all want to change for the better and know that we can and that it isn’t too late.

Anyway – that’s what I was thinking. So – on the cancer battle front we have had a somewhat eventful week and I will post an update (tomorrow I hope).