I stood and stared hard at her, hands on my hips. She was crying, again, because she'd been denied that which was VERY obviously not for her best good.
Her tears flowed and her shrieks echoed off the walls threatening to strip me of the thread from which I was hanging.
No amount of reasoning was getting through to her. No amount of self-talk was calming my frustration. We were in a dead-lock where everybody was going to lose.
But as I stood there fuming, I began to see myself in her. Those plump cheeks and almond-shaped eyes and smooth, brown skin stood in contrast to my own features of European American descent. We may function as mother and daughter but there's nothing in our appearance or DNA to connect us.
Except sin, that is.
I'm as errant as she. Or perhaps she's as errant as I. Either way, we are actually far more similar than we are different.
She wants her own way and, truth be told, I want mine, too. I don't want to be forced to eat food I don't like and she doesn't either. She lets herself be controlled by emotion and I'm guilty of the same. I'm annoyed when my carefully crafted plans are thwarted and so is she. She's cranky when tired and I barely function without proper sleep.
The list could go on but I'll spare you.
So as I stood there looking down on her (literally and figuratively) God spoke to my heart. He was patient but chiding. My behavior and response was unacceptable and no amount of attempting to justify it was going to change that fact.
He whispered to my heart, in the tenderest way possible, that He needed me to surrender being right in favor of being righteous.
It was literally that simple.
I relaxed my shoulders, dropped my hands from their indignant perch on my hips, and softened my face. She was me but I definitely wasn't God.
I endured an intense moment of gratitude for the blessed reality that God doesn't parent like I do.
She immediately perceived the change that had come over me and her resistance of only a moment before melted. A slow smile spread across her chubby face and those almond eyes become slivers.
I opened my arms to her and she leaped in. She speaks Hmong and a little Thai and I speak an increasingly strange combination of Thai and English so we didn't exchange a grand number of words.
But we didn't need to.
The Holy Spirit did what the Holy Spirit does. He persisted, convicted, equipped, and translated.
And as a result, He took a train wreck of a moment and redeemed it before things truly derailed.
Peace has been restored and my beautiful little girl has her smile back.