Blaming Versus Understanding

          One of the best times of being a parent is when our children work or play together lovingly. Those times always overwhelm me and I want to live in that moment for as long as I can and bask in the light of that peace and joy.  Likewise, I enjoy books, movies, stories, that have people united in a love that is pure, innocent and genuine; the feel-good-kind of stories. 

          When my life story started to include more of my husband and I working and playing together lovingly, I experienced many more feel-good-kind of days.  It meant putting an end to my childish ways of blaming the other for not going by the rules, usually my rules, or not cooperating properly, trying very hard, etc.  Whenever we started to argue, I always thought in my head, "Well, you started it."  Starting it is always easy, but the challenge lies in stopping it before it escalates.

          I now picture our Father in Heaven watching our family live together, and I want to give Him a feel-good-kind of moment.  When I start the blaming game of, "he did this or he didn't do this," it takes an act of God, literally, to stop me in my tracks and turn things around.  I beg for the grace to be more understanding and to overcome my stubborness to say, "I shouldn't have said or did this or that, please forgive me."  The situation changes.

          The following excerpt from a Bantam Book entitled, Peace in Every Step by Thich Nhat Hahn was in a church bulletin recently, and it beautifully sums up what I learned about blaming versus understanding:

When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you don't blame the lettuce.  You look for reasons it is not doing well.  It may need fertilizer, or more water, or less sun.  You never blame the lettuce.
Yet if we have problems with our friends or our family, we blame the other person.  But if we know how to take care of them, they will grow well, like the lettuce.  Blaming has no positive effect at all, nor does trying to persuade using reason and arguments. That is my experience.  No blame, no reasoning, no argument, just understanding.  If you understand, and you show that you understand, you can love, and the situation will change.

          This Sunday we celebrate Father's Day.  Let's give Our Father in Heaven a feel-good-kind of day by living as children of God that work, play, and pray together lovingly.  It's the gift that keeps on giving because we give ourselves and our family a feel-good-kind of day too!