On Wasting Sunscreen and Being a Jerk
Hannah left me a voice mail last night in which she apologized profusely for wasting her can of spray-on sunscreen at camp yesterday. Apparently, she and her friends had some fun spraying their sunscreen not only on each other, but on grass, in the air, and anywhere else they could. Hannah, bless her contrite heart, offered to pay me back for the sunscreen she wasted.
She also asked me not to be mad at her.
Last week, I discovered on the way out the door one morning that Lily had finished off her can of sunscreen the day before. This was frustrating, since I needed to send her to camp with some sunscreen and I didn’t have time to run by the market and get another can. I gave Hannah’s spray-on sunscreen to Lily, and gave Hannah the “old fashioned” sunscreen–the lotion that you actually have to rub on by hand.
When I heard Hannah say on the voice mail, “Daddy, please don’t be mad at me,” I thought to myself, Just how frustrated did I get last week? Did I lose my temper? Did I raise my voice? Over a can of sunscreen? Whatever I did, how did it make Hannah feel? Did she get the impression that I would be really mad at her for wasting sunscreen?
I found out later that her mom had given her very clear instructions the night before to be responsible with her sunscreen at camp. Hannah’s plea for me not to be mad was more a result of her guilty conscience than a reflection on my behavior the previous week.
(When Hannah knows she’s done something wrong, she’s really hard on herself. Like father like daughter, I suppose. I try to remember that when she’s messed up. I don’t have to give her the same scolding some other child might need. She beats herself up pretty good without me.)
But that moment when I wondered just what kind of an impression I left on Hannah the week before with the first sunscreen incident, that’s a moment I’ve had a few times recently, at work and at home and with my friends. Do I say or do things that offend? Or intimidate? Or criticize? Put another way, Do I come across as a jerk sometimes?
I know I’m being a little hard on myself here. As Jon Acuff said at Kairos Nashville tonight, “No one’s internal voice is a friend.” My internal voice tells me I might be a selfish jerk, but I know I can’t trust that voice.
On the other hand, it’s pretty easy for me to get caught up in my own head and not think about how my words or actions are received by others. I want to be a nice guy, someone who is kind and respectful and whose words build others up. But when I’m focusing on my own stuff, on getting tasks done, or on trying to fit in, I sometimes say things that fail to build others up, my children included.
I know that I’ll sometimes say things I shouldn’t, that I’ll sometimes treat others worse than they deserve, that I’ll do things that serve my ego without regard to others. I’m human–that’s the kind of stuff we do to each other, unfortunately. James 3:8 says, “But no human can subdue the tongue; it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.” (Come on, James, tell us what you really think.)
But I also know that God calls us to be better than that, and through His strength we can be.
I hope that by taking a step back every now and then and examining my words and actions that I’ll be more considerate in the future. It’s easy to focus on my own little private universe, but God calls us to consider the impact of our choices on others, and that means trying to get a sense of the impact that our words and actions have on friends, colleagues, strangers, our family. Most especially our family.
There used to be someone else in my life whom I could count on to rein me back in when I stepped over the line. Now, it’s just me. Rather, it’s me and God. Inviting Him to play that role in my life isn’t easy, but it’s something I need to learn to do.
Image: “Reykjavik harbour,” Gueorgui Tcherednitchenko, Flickr (CC)