Me! Compassionate???

I've been asked many, many times what gifts or qualities God has given me that help make me a better person.  For years my answer has always been that I am a compassionate person, easily able to sympathize with another person and put myself in their shoes.  It's comes very easy to me and it's a quality in myself that I am incredibly thankful for.

Last night and this morning, however, compassionate would have been the last word I would have used to describe myself, and consequently I am left broken-hearted, feeling like the worst mother in the world.

At around three o'clock this morning I was suddenly woken up by my four-year-old crying and screaming at the top of his lungs.  The past few nights we have battled rather tirelessly to get him to go to sleep without doing this very thing.  He's as happy as a clam when he lays down to go to bed at night but then as soon as we close the door to leave he starts crying.  This is very unusual for him since he's been the best sleeper since the day we brought him home from the hospital.  I thought perhaps he just wasn't tired enough when it was time to go to bed and so yesterday I decided to skip nap time in hopes that he would fall asleep more quickly.  My experiment worked, to a point, because he did go to bed far easier but then here he was, at three o'clock in the morning, screaming and showing no signs of going back to bed.  Alex and I took turns battling with him until it reached a decent hour to be up for good.  When I finally did let him come out of his room, he continued to cry uncontrollably and nothing I could do or say would console him.

Exhausted and sleep-deprived Erica is a person no one wants to meet.  I'm crabby, irrational, and have zero patience for just about anything.  Add a crabby child into the mix and it's a recipe for disaster.  I made the kids breakfast, made myself two cups of coffee knowing that it was going to be a V E R Y long day, and sat down on my kitchen floor and just started sobbing. (When I run out of options and don't know what else to do I usually resort to crying.)  I felt a little better after having those few moments to myself and so I wiped away the tears and decided it was time to go and apologize to Cale for losing my patience.  I walked into the room where he was, got down on my knees, and asked for his forgiveness.  He started crying, again.  God must be really trying to teach me something through this, I thought through bared teeth.  Regardless, I gave him a hug and decided to change his diaper and get him dressed.

This is the point where I wish more than anything that Cale was able to speak and tell me what is wrong.  I wish more than anything he could tell me when something hurts or when he's scared, angry, or sad.  I would be a lot better at showing him compassion if I knew what was wrong instead of assuming he's just being an unreasonable four-year-old.

Cale woke up at three o'clock this morning because he was in pain.  At some point during the night he must have had diarrhea (sorry, TMI) which caused one of the most terrible diaper rashes I have ever seen.  He was one big flaming fireball and suddenly the wave of guilt hit me so hard it nearly knocked me over.  His crying was justified, his screaming had a purpose, and my loss of temper and patience was completely and utterly uncalled for.  I feel like the worst mother in the world.  I have compassion for the stranger on the side of the road holding a cardboard sign, but yet where is the compassion for my own son - the one person in this world I would die for?

Some may think I'm being dramatic, and I'm sure in a few weeks I will have forgotten all about the events that transpired in the last twelve hours, but God really showed me my need for patience and compassion, especially for Cale since he lacks the ability to speak for himself.

Leave it to God to show me that an area of my life that I had pretty much figured out actually does indeed need a lot of improvement.