It's his inherent toughness that keeps him out of the spotlight sometimes. He takes after his mom in that it generally takes an act of God to get them to admit a) something hurts; b) something is unpleasant or in any other way dramatic; or c) get them too worked up. They are relatively drama-free. Elijah, Jael and I? We manufacture drama. Life free and easy? For us, looks like the pot needs a little stirring. Ironically enough, Jael might be the very best of all at this. But Judah likes things the way they were the day before, and the day before that -- routine, order and stability.
The times when he will use his great physical strength (and occasionally unleash the best purple-- actual purple-- rages that I have ever seen) is when his keenly developed sense of justice is violated.
An early sampling of Judah's purple rages
I triggered the purple rage a week ago, for example. We had come home late from a friend's and full of candy and exhilaration, I swept the kids to bed, one by one, Judah being the last to go as usual. This is our special time together, the only time he really gets Rachel and I to himself, and was already not pleased that it had been shortened. And then I did the unpardonable. I swept him off to bed without any food. This would not have been a big deal (he couldn't have been hungry) save for the reasons listed above. Food before bed is simply what happens. And now I was telling him the very created order as he knew it was passing away. And so the battle began.
For those of you who have never seen Judah wage war, it's very much like my high school girlfriend used to argue with me: repeat the same point over and over against my carefully rationed arguments until I stalk away in disgust. When faced with the crushing arguments of truth, raise your voice and repeat your single argument LOUDER. When he stated his argument the first time, "Daddy, I need to tell you something..." I listened. By time #5, I was ready to throw him in the trash can. By time #10, I was threatening to take him to bed with no story. By time #15, when the story had been lost, I was despairing of waking the other two children. By time #20, I think he had forgotten what he wanted to tell me. (I tested this theory between times #20 and #25. I finally stopped and looked at him and instead of giving out more consequences (losing stories for a YEAR ?) and said, "Ok, tell me exactly what you want." He just repeated himself as if I hadn't even spoken,) Eventually, around time #30, I carried him upstairs for brushing of teeth. I should have worn full-body armor. He's just too damn strong. He can already take out Elijah -- I think I'm next in two years or so. It'll be really embarrassing to admit a 5-year-old beat me up, but I'm already practicing my speech.
It was while attempting to brush his teeth that I finally lost it. 45 minutes of patience went out the window, and I started snarling back at him that he had better... or I was gonna ... and that he was leaving me no choice... and I kept praying that I did have a choice, but I couldn't think of one amidst the parenting trenches.
By God's mercy, Rachel walked by at that moment and took pity on both of us. "A word," she said, just as I inhaled for round two of snarling. "He's just like you," she said. "You're both stubborn as anything. You both hate change. Why do you get to tell him that he can't eat his apple tonight?"
I had "Because I'm his dad," all ready to go, but sat on it for a minute.
She continued. "If I told you that you couldn't eat while we watched TV tonight, you'd have a fit."
"Of course I'd have a fit!"
She looked over my shoulder to the baleful, soggy boy behind me, brown eyes glumly looking away from mine as I turned my gaze to him. And just like that -- I got it. The anger ebbed from my body almost in one palpable wave.
"Judah, " I said, "would you forgive me?"
He looked at me warily.
"And would you be willing to eat your apple in bed tonight?" The eyes, lifeless for the past fifteen minutes, lit up with joy.
He took ten minutes figuring out which apple he wanted to eat -- and subsequently only ate a few bites, as we found two days later when we discovered the desiccated remains of the apple-- but the relationship was restored. And strangely enough, the rest of the night I had his big (BIG) brown eyes burned into my vision along with the words of St. Paul from 1st Corinthians 13:4-6 (The Message) "
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth.
That quotation above captures why even amidst all the failings, trials and 1st world misfortunes that this little family lives through day to day, we can go forward without fear and with confident hope for our uncertain future.
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