Month: September 2006

There’s one thing I can’t stand… kids who are spoiled.  Oh, don’t  misunderstand me.  I spoil my kids with love as much as possible but there’s also a wrong and bad kind of spoiling, the kind that makes the kids behave badly.  So it’s my life’s goal to make sure my kids aren’t that way.  I want them to grow up to respect others and their property the way they’d want to be treated.

Well, boys sure are difficult.  JJ is proving to be quite a handful.  While Anna loves to help out and obey us fairly well, JJ on the other hand, doesn’t.  He’s quite defiant actually.  We’ve told him over and over.  On top of that, he knows that he’s loved so it aids in his being defiant.  Soojin is not helping in that department (but he’s so cute)!

But in the event of disobedience, we have to be firm.  That happened… again… tonight.  After bathing them, I let them play a bit.  Well, to my not-so-surprise, I find out that JJ drew on the wall with a green crayon!    Oh he knows better.  He probably figured I’d just slap his buttocks a bit and move on… well, this wasn’t his day.  I took him aside and talked to him about what he did wrong, what we had told him not to do (which is not to draw on walls and that’s what papers are for).  I took the official punishment stick (aka. wooden rice scooper ??).  I gave him good slap on his hands.  And thighs.

I hate these displinary moments… but I refuse to let my kids grow up improperly.  I understand more and more what my parents had to go through… inside.  This hurts.  Whoever said that love hurts, knows a lot about life.  This time, very literally.  I told him as before, that whenever he got punished, I’d be as well, to share in his pains, and as an act of my taking responsibility in my shortcomings as a parent.  My thigh and hands hurt.

Whoever tells me that spanking and disciplining is easy don’t love their children.  But I didn’t want to cry in front of my son.  Not yet anyway… perhaps on the rainy days of his teenage hood.  The innerds of my heart hurts whenever I discipline them.  I don’t know why but this time was more difficult… perhaps it’s because I know that I will have to repeat this more with my son in the future.  In the mean time, after the explanation (aka. the lecture), I hugged him.  And massaged his wounds.  This must be what God’s grace and mercy must be like.  And this must be like how God feels after spanking us for our disobedience.  I held him for good five minutes until his tears somewhat stopped.  Then he ran to his mom.    I do hope he grows up to understand… but he won’t truly… until he becomes a dad himself.

Here’s to all the dads that had to discipline their kids but loves them to the end…

Lately, a couple (not yet married) that we know of are going through that “final stage difficulties” prior to marriage. Shorty put, things are rocky. It made me realize yet again that relationships are where God is needed the most. Otherwise, we wouldn’t last.Soojin and I are not perfect, to say the least. We fight still. And we used to fight even more back in our first two years or so of our marriage. When we got married, I told myself that neither of us are near even perfect, and with the uncertainty of life ahead of us, the only thing we could be certain of was our promise: our promise to each other to put each other first, and to continue to forgive each other, and through Christ, bring ourselves together and become more like Christ.

Over the years, I’ve had my shares of anger and resentment and loads other things. I’ve head-butted the wall and punched it several times due to anger as we fought. But I’ve never hit Soojin. And I’ve always mended the differences between us over and over again. Even if it was to agree to disagree. We still don’t see everything eye to eye. But if Christ forgave us for all of our past, present, and future shortcomings and sins, both of us know that we don’t have the right to hold it out against the other. Again, it’s the parable of the servant that was forgiven a year’s wage who couldn’t forgive a fellow servant for mere change.

When you enter into sacred holy matrimony (don’t joke about that), you don’t say those vows of “for better or for worse” for nothing. God never promised us certainty about our future. Only that He would be with us through our uncertainties. If one waits till your would-be-spouse is ready or situations were “perfect”, you will be waiting forever. I guarantee it. When you decide to marry someone, you are making the promise to both of yourselves that you decide to accept the other person as they are (as God created).

I feel that lately, with our generation and younger, we give up too easily on things. Especially on relationships. I pray that this will change. After all, would you want God to change His mind about you?