Something made me worry a bit when I approached this muscular military man to let him know it seemed like his son was bullying my son. My only shred of evidence was the disappearance of 18 cookies noticed on a very frantic Wednesday morning last week. In hindsight I’d laugh at my son for pulling out this foiled container of store bought cookies, peeling back the lid and with a shocked expression say there was nothing in there.
With only two people living in the house and me not touching the item I purchased just a few days before, my son seemed to be the obvious culprit. However, he has not learned the art of forgiveness because he still struggles with the first step of awareness. Surely he must have tried to cover up what he knew was wrong in some way by putting the container away in such perfect condition he was even able to trick himself! Now that’s funny but sad. Any hiding we do should automatically take us back to the hiding Adam and Eve did, revealing there is something we are not owning up to. Alarm bells should sound like emergency sirens when we catch ourselves because if we don’t want to hold on to it or bury it for soul’s sake.
It took forever on an already rushed school day morning to get any shred of truth from my son who obviously held on and buried so much he deceived himself. All he could say was he had a friend who loved cookies. Drawing the only logical conclusion without losing my mind, I figured my son hung out with Cookie Monster and decided to give away our cookies out of the goodness of his heart. Unfortunately the situation escalated at counseling later when I admitted I lost it over cookies the way couples normally lose it over how the toothpaste was left in the bathroom.
An honest confession on my part led to an honest assessment. More information was revealed with professional probing. My son admitted this boy had been bullying him which concluded the classmate was more “monster” than friend and less sweet than chocolate morsels. The story crumbles further when we return to school and have the opportunity to address the boy’s parent.
Truth does set you free! A apology of such caliber like the one I received, though worried if it came with severe basic training-like pushups, deserved a otherworldly reply. Nothing speaks truth better than the Word so the first verse I thought of was “be merciful for I am merciful.” And nothing spoke it better than writing it on a note card sized just right to fit into a sandwich bag containing one large homemade pumpkin cookie.
The child in me just giggled as I placed the raisins into that dough making it look like pumpkin eyes, nose and teeth. Luckily it still came out of the oven looking like a face. My son was already asleep when the air around him filled with cinnamon spice. So it was quite a surprise to him, who struggles with honesty, to have to be the disciple to deliver the tasty message to a Cookie Monster.
When we were children we probably thought it was funny to watch the blue fuzzy guy spread crumbs all over the other side of our T.V. screen trying to hold a cookie with flimsy incomplete fingers. But never would we imagine that his passion for his favorite food would mean our lunch box needed a padlock. Its moments of such a reality our mind fills up with a new found anxiety, causes us worry in like situations and teaches us new ways to respond. As adults the world would never accept perfect penmanship when revenge is so advocated.
I know I forgot about the time I had to write a note like that to my mother and how embarrassing it was each time she mentioned it again years later laughing at words I probably felt I was writing with my last breath. Discovering I was in trouble was a tough pill to swallow. Somehow I went from respecting authority to self righteous teenage years and full circle back with God who now tells me to drop my backpack full of junk for the world to see at the foot of His cross.Obviously I could run a lot faster and play more freely without this weight. So why do we carry it? Why not start taking up calligraphy and start farming out forgiveness to everyone in our contact list, starting with our selves first? Everyone wants a cookie but the chain has to start somewhere.
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