Because we focused on the snake, we missed the scorpion.

The title to this post is an Egyptian proverb and I honestly do not know exactly what it means. I just thought it was appropriate since I spent the majority of today helping my daughter with a class project that involved the Western Shovel-Nosed snake.

However, I also think the proverb is saying that sometimes we focus on the things that seem to be the most obviously dangerous and we miss the less obvious risks such as the scorpions that could be just as deadly as the bigger snakes.

K and I had planned on working on this project Thursday afternoon, but that plan was interrupted by my body’s spontaneous need to reject my appendix. My children are not very tolerant of changes. They are used to things being pretty well planned. Most days, it’s routine for me to give them a brief in the morning of the day’s activities. We do some things spontaneously, but that is definitely not the norm around our house. Spontaneity causes their mother great stress, so we avoid that at all cost. However, Kaitlin’s reaction to this big change of plans took me completely by surprise.

She became unreasonable, even when I talked to her from the hospital prior to going to surgery, she was blaming me for “doing this to her” and worrying about how her project was going to get done. Even with all the stress going on around me, I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt, and justifying her behavior explaining that I knew she was under stress, that this was the first time we had an emergency of this type in our family and she just did not know how to express her emotions.

However, I have to admit that her behavior really hurt me, and I became pretty resentful of her open selfishness. Part of it was hurt, part of it was also pride. As a parent you strive to do the best you can training your children to cope with life, and I felt like a horrible failure seeing my daughter so unable to cope and articulate what she was feeling and making such a fool of herself in front of everybody.

Her behavior did not improve at all after I came home, she got really upset because I did not feel well enough to go to church on Sabbath and see her perform and she stood there yelling insults at me, totally loosing control.

This is when I started focusing on the snake (her open selfishness) and missed the scorpion (the fact that she was hurting and did not have the skills to cope with her stress), I spent most of Sabbath very upset at her, really not even wanting her to talk to me or being around me. I woke up today, still harboring these feelings. On the one hand, I wanted to blast her and really put her in her place and talk about how her attitude had hurt me, and how ugly she had acted in front of so many people, On the other hand, I wanted to tell her that I understood what she was going through and wanted to help her learn something from this experience so that she knew how to handle herself next time if something like this happened again.

So in true Ileana form I did both. I did blast her, which I profoundly regret, but then I reached out and got her to talk to me about the real issues at hand.

She explained how scared she had felt when she was told I was in the hospital and that I was going to have to undergo surgery. She was scared that I might die. But everybody around her was telling her how it was not a big deal, that the procedure was supposed to be so easy and common, etc. and that she did not want to “look ridiculous” in front of everybody acting scared, thinking her mom was going to die. So instead she got angry and started acting out in order to cover her real feelings. I told her that I understood completely, that I tend to do the same thing when I am under stress, but that is very important that she feels secure enough around her family that she is able to express her real feelings without worrying what they might think of her. That if she would have expressed how she was feeling, her aunts would have been able to help her better and offer more support. That by acting out the way she did, people got confused and did not know what to do to help her.

I do not think she understood everything I said, but we were able to get past the hurts we were both feeling and I hope she felt accepted and forgiven.

I guess life crises are necessary to bring to light those little areas in life that do not normally manifest themselves when things are going well. I hope to be able to work with K and help her mature emotionally so she is better equipped to deal with life surprises.