Coping Strategy 4: Don't Get Mad, Get Your Camera

I open the door, step inside, and look up the 18 steps leading to our second floor. At odd angles and different positions, on almost every step, are shoes of various colors, shapes, and sizes--no two matching. The boys have been enjoying their favorite game! By the boys, I mean Shota and Ma-kun, both three and a half years old Down's kids. We have a gate at the top of the steep stairs to prevent them from tumbling down. So, they love to take the shoes arranged neatly in rows at the top of the second floor entrance and throw them through or under the bars of the gate as far down the stairs as possible. They've done a particularly outstanding job today. Instead of getting angry, I go for my camera. We've never had any children do this before!

Coping strategy four: Don't get angry, get your camera! How many times do we explode and obsess over an event but later laugh as we tell friends and family about the disaster that is now a treasured memory. I wish I had learned this when I first had children, not now, thirty-three years later!

When Jason was three and Matthew two, we were keeping a small boy, about one and a half, while he awaited moving to his adoptive family. All the ladies of the house left me and Chris, who was 17 at the time, to babysit. I got distracted doing something in my office area and assumed that Chris was watching the three boys. I suddenly realized I didn't hear anything. Silence is NOT golden in such circumstances.

I rushed into the living room and didn't see anyone. Then I heard joyful laughter in the corner of the kitchen. [For those of you who don't have children or it has been too long for you to remember, "joyful laughter" may or may NOT mean all is well.] Rounding the corner I found the source of all the "joy." Jason was holding a plastic honey bear over the heads of the other two boys squeezing the remaining honey over their heads. Matthew and Matti were gleefully slapping their hands in the honey on the floor. Their hair and most of their bodies were covered in the sticky, sweet fluid.

My first thought was not, "Where's my camera?" but rather, "Sarah's gonna kill me." My second thought was, "Where's Chris?" Then I heard him pounding on the metal door that blocked off our staircase from the first floor. It seems he had stepped out for a moment and Jason had locked the door behind him. Because I was in my study, I couldn't hear his pounding on the metal door.

Unfortunately, in our panic and fear of the women returning, Chris and I cleaned up the boys and the

kitchen before we thought about taking a picture. Gone forever is that prize winning photograph. So next time, before your anger deletes the scene, make a memory!

"No test or temptation that comes your way is beyond the course of what others have had to face. All you need to remember is that God will never let you down; he'll never let you be pushed past your limit; he'll always be there to help you come through it." (I Cor. 10:13, The Message)