These notes are very funny and telling. In fact, if you look at Will’s, you’ll see that his impression of what his Mommy likes to eat is “Texas Skillet, wine and coffee.” Hmm. He also has some advice. When asked what he would change about his Mom, he answered “work less on the computer…and get outside to play more.” Ah, noted. According to Ellie’s note, she would never trade Mommy for anything, not even a — “monkey.” (That’s good to know. I’m glad I rank higher than a monkey.) She also seems to believe that I am two feet tall and a year younger than I actually am. And I was touched that she wrote that I am really good at dancing, something that tickled her older siblings so much they actually fell out of their chairs laughing.

These sweet little windows into the minds of my kids have offered me some lessons today, reflecting on them three days after Mothers Day. My kids are funny, sweet and insightful. And I will do well to consider their perceptions. They are good barometers for how I am doing as a mom. I didn’t know, until Will wrote it, that the smartest thing he’s learned from me is “to believe in Jesus.” (Sigh. Tear in the eye.) I also didn’t know that the reason he knows he’s loved is “because Mommy hugs and kisses [him] every night.” Who knew how easy he was? What my kids see as strengths are things I don’t even think about doing most of the time. And what they see as weaknesses, I give equal inattention to, until today. On this third day after Mother’s Day, I think I will show less enthusiasm about my dinner prep companion, the five o’clock glass of wine. I also think I should work less at the computer come afternoon and spend more time playing outside. And, finally, I should perhaps work at improving my dancing. I do, after all, want to keep my edge over that monkey.

The ant list is an idea I got from my friend’s mom who used it when her children were small. The deal is this: do the things on your ant list; and when you’re done, you get to go do something fun. The things on the ant list range from cleaning toilets and sweeping porches to planning a meal and writing a letter to a sponsored child across the Pond. The things on the afternoon rewards list range from family bike rides ending at the pool to a trip to our favorite novelty shop and soda fountain. So my four little ants learn useful skills and stay busy for the morning, with the promise of something fun come afternoon. Mom gets to work with fewer interruptions (and not having to stop and start the clock repeatedly makes it much easier to bill).

Two summers ago, I took the ant list idea and made it my own with the “I’m Bored” jar. If any of my children uttered that phrase to me, they had to pull a folded slip of paper out of that jar. It contained chores and assignments. For example, they might have to look something up in the atlas and write about it. They might have to write me the definition of boredom. They might have to dust the window blinds. This year I needed something bigger than the “I’m Bored” jar, its use more of a pesticide against looking to Mom for entertainment.

This year I have been picking up contracts and using my mornings to produce billable work. The contracts are sporadic enough I can’t bank on them, let alone justify a series of expensive summer camps times four. So the ant list is going to be my in-home camp, my summer Mary Poppins. And I hope something magical comes from it, not just a clean house but fun memories of afternoons together, reaping the rewards of our morning labors.

Well that’s the idea anyway. Perhaps I’ll write an update come July. I’m guessing my ant list buys me 4 hours a day. That leaves an average of 10 hours a day over an 80-day summer break, equaling 800 hours of varying degrees of childcare. So if you have any additions for our ant list or afternoon rewards, I’ve got roughly 800 hours to fill…

This morning I was in my own kitchen, sandwiching turkey bacon between paper towels in the microwave, eggs in the fry pan: a bait to lure sleepy children from their beds because today, while I drove west down Interstate 10, they’d be starting a full day of standardized testing at school. They’d need a good breakfast, if not a little motivation. And with full tummies, they’d leave for school, taking packed lunches and the family frenzy with them, leaving behind a quiet house.

I am a glutton for quiet. It’s an appetite I can’t satisfy. My home, my calendar, my work are all loud and demanding and busy. The solitude and silence I crave is vital to fueling this mother of four to run at the breakneck pace that is our daily schedule. But “meals” of this sort are rare. And though the prompt for this day spent hours from home was an out-of-town funeral for my dear friend’s father, I was keenly aware from the beginning that it also would be a personal grace for me, a food that would nourish my soul.

So after the funeral, I purposely detoured my path home. I drove Highway 98 along the Florida shore, splitting Okaloosa Island down its middle. I stopped to drink coffee on a shady porch under humming fans while the dwindling, post-spring break traffic whirred by, the shoreline just a block away. I wandered into outlet stores, realizing as I did that I wasn’t in the mood for shopping or buying. But I was high on the thrill of being free to do whatever I wanted, without the fetters of anyone else’s agenda or design on the day.

I finally hit a store that captured my interest, intensified by the thought that I’d like to sit on the beach and could use a casual outfit to replace the dress slacks and blouse I was still wearing from the funeral. So I ended up buying after all: Capri’s and a soft, smocked linen shirt, perfect for the drive home or a spell of beach sitting. I’d change into them in a public restroom before finding a public beach access.

The Gulf of Mexico looked wild today, its waves a boisterous foaming at the edges of white, glistening beach. The sand, dry and warm from the afternoon sun, was pliant and welcoming. I lay in it, hands clasped behind my head, knuckles sinking into its granular kernels like a spoon in sugar.

I’d wished for an unspoiled beach, noisy with birds and wind and the crashing of waves, but I’d acquiesce to sharing it with human neighbors whose human noises spoiled my plan. They gathered around beach chairs twenty feet away. Their language was rough and uncreative, and I found myself wishing they knew more adjectives, ones that didn’t start with the letter F. I plugged my ears with my thumbs and pretended I was alone. The sun sank into my skin like warm oil, a healing balm.

I’d fight my inner Pharisee, laying in that lovely sand. In my mind I’d make these raucous beach goers insignificant: they were foolish, burning with base pleasures and shallow prattle, ignoring the breathtaking glory of sky and water that glistened before their dim eyes. Why should they intrude on this hallowed moment like graffiti? Love and grace, Kim Houghton, I’d chasten myself. They’re God’s creatures too, imperfect like you, in need of much grace, like you. I packed the Pharisee away and took a picture of the water before getting into the driver’s seat of my car.

I drove east, and listened to my favorite preachers talk about Sabbath and gospel rest, about human imperfection and grace. And an hour or so down the road, I stopped to eat dinner, having ducked into a drug store for a pad of paper and pen, a Sharpie pen with an extra fine line. I sat alone at a table for two, engrossed in the twilight parade of moments that had made this day a meal of quiet sustenance.

The cap of my Sharpie pen made a crisp pop as I removed it to write, to capture this day on paper, to help my forgetful brain remember: my friend buried her father, and I was honored to sit through his funeral, reflecting on the footprint he’d left from all his years of life and loving, his love of traveling the world to see God’s creation. We’d celebrated the significance of his life, his faith, his fatherhood and grand-fatherhood. It had been a joy to sit with my friend after the funeral, surrounded by her family and childhood friends. We’d eaten ham and green beans and congealed salad prepared by grey-headed ladies in a church hall that smelled like food, Lysol and diapers. And the childhood friends had told stories of school-days mischief. It was a fine transition from funeral to this meandering slowly home. I’d drunk deeply the freedom of the road, the brilliant, jewel-like Florida coastline and the significance of a man’s life. And the grace of it all fell sweetly, like the night slipping gently over day.

It’s how I see Hope and Realism.

I don’t know if it’s right for me to put these two in a ring together, to make them duke it out. Maybe Hope and Realism are not competitors. Maybe they’re friends.

But my father-in-law is … dying, and it’s the first time I’ve said that out loud. In fact, saying it feels like betrayal, like I’m not giving him the hope he deserves. I’ve jabbed him with a left, a heavy-handed punch of realism.

This man whom I love, this man who is father to my husband, grandfather to my children, has in the span of just a few months gone from a vibrant and energetic man to a weak, suffering “patient.” Last summer he was pulling my kids on an tube in the lake, sweeping them off to museums and cooking them dinner. And suddenly he’s years older, as if someone moved the clock forward when none of us was looking. Cancer is on the move inside his body. And with each pain-inducing move, it is taking away the years to come, eroding former hopes. The professionals have been realistic, offering a hope tempered with numbers, with months. I guess they don’t want to kill hope, but they don’t want anyone hoping for years. That would be going too far.

And I am struggling to understand the place of hope. Do we hope against a forecast, dare to trust in miracle, in God’s ability to heal? Or protect our hearts with realism, prepare to order affairs before it’s too late? Some of us like to keep hearts in check because disappointment is a terrible monger. And some of us confuse hope with denial, using it to delay having to go to that hard place, the place where we let go, where we seek a truce with death and closure.

Is there a place where Hope and Realism declare a truce? Where they walk arm and arm out of that ring, through the screaming crowds?

Scripture is no help when it comes to easing the reality that death does indeed toll. Yet it puts death in its rightful perspective. It’s not to be feared. For the recipients of God’s unbounded mercy and love, it’s only a momentary trouble. It’s not the end of hope; it’s the beginning. Even with its unknowns, it cannot separate us from God. “Be strong and courageous,” God said to the warrior Joshua as he took command of Israel. “Do not be afraid. Neither be discouraged for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.” And so he will. Even into death.

In this season of Lent, we identify with Christ’s journey into death, God going before us into that which we most fear. That painful separation from the Father? He bore it alone to spare us from the same. His suffering broke the grave, broke death’s sting. He made a way for us to pass through death to life.

Our family has entered its own lent, our own journey towards death. We don’t want to let go of the man we love. What do we dare to hope?

We dare to hope that this, even this, is within the loving embrace of a Father who will not, does not, ever, abandon, us. A healing of cancer, as much a joy as it would be, is still just a temporary salvation, for we are all assured of death. But a conquering of death’s sting, of the grave’s hold, is a permanent and abiding salvation, a reality that is as much a part of hope as it is a part of death.

So we hope for Hope itself because if it is anything, it is real — far more real than death.

Day 4. The pump house team has finished the excavation of trench around the concrete pad where the well is dug. Arms are sore from breaking up rock with a pickaxe. Our team mixes and pours concrete now, leveling the wet mud so block can be laid. Enrique found us two locals this morning, and we’ve paid them to help with the work. They’ve taken over the role of boss now, pointing and directing in Spanish. They know what they’re doing and work deftly, unfazed by the lack of equipment and tools we take for granted.

Our team shovels gravel. A man dressed for work, in a button down and slacks, stops. He takes a shovel and with a few quick, sure strokes, finishes the job with a grin. The men here appear slight, but they are strong. They’re used to working by hand in this latitude, under this sun. The local who is acting as foreman can’t believe we’re from Florida. He wonders why our skin is not brown.

On the dirt lot where the kids are playing and coloring in papers, I’m sitting on a beam. Kids climb on me. They like to be held. They get very happy when told their coloring is beautiful. They smile. Many of them have rotted teeth. One little girl reaches up her arms to Bailey. She wants to be held. Bailey picks her up with a look of surprise. I can tell by her awkward smile that she’s a little self-conscious. Bailey’s not overly demonstrative, but I can tell she’s touched by this little girl’s abandon. Bailey’s heart is connecting with the kids, and I store this image in my heart. I remember Bailey’s prayers going back at least two years, prayers for this place and an opportunity to come here. In this moment, I am comforted; Mike and I are not her only loving parents. God is parenting her in ways I cannot rival. I can hardly express this feeling in words.

I won’t ponder long. I’ve lost Carlito again. He’s been coming with us and flitting back and forth between the work site and the play yard. But he’s wandered off. I find him playing video games in one of the markets and convince him to join us.

Rixy is helping us direct games for the kids, wielding a whistle with a wild sense of power. She is not much older than most of the kids. She smiles wide and bosses her younger companions with delight. Michael, in a baseball hat, watches. When Rixy, high on her whistle, forgets to translate, Michael helps. In between he tells me about his school. It’s an alternative school, and Henry told me that Michael earned a scholarship to go there. That’s why he knows English. He walks miles to and from school every day.

I study Michael: his eagerness to help, his attentiveness to us. Everything about him foreshadows possibility. He is a born leader in a community whose natural progression is poverty. Children who might go to school don’t because they’re needed to watch younger siblings. Without education, they don’t learn English. Without English on an island that makes its revenue from tourism, they don’t find jobs. Without jobs, they’re stuck. Young teens have babies that in turn trap them in the poverty cycle. Motherhood becomes the warden who crushes their tender aspirations.

Time will tell what Michael will lead others to do. I remember his mother squeezing my hand last night, her tired, world-worn eyes. Without a husband, she too is trapped. I am hopeful Michael encounters the grace and love of Jesus. I am hopeful he grows to be an agent of change, to help make the Colonia a place of redemption and life. Later we tell the story of Joseph: a multicolored coat that incited his brothers’ jealousy, how his brothers sold him to slave traders, how many years later God redeemed their evil with good. Rixy translates, “What men meant for harm, God used for good.” We hand out the flavored water and cookies.

We leave the Colonia for Casa Isabella, making sure Carlito isn’t left behind. We dig through our gear back at the apartments and find a snorkel and mask for him. We wade out into the clear, turquoise water of the Caribbean. I put on my mask and slip the snorkel through a plastic loop, then dive headlong into the cool waters.

It is like a baptism, swimming in these waters. They seep into the wrinkles of my skin and wash away the dirt and sweat, the sunscreen and bug repellant. The oils from my skin have painted a thin, wavy rainbow on the surface of the water, like Joseph’s coat floating above me. I reflect on what the world has meant for harm and the people of the Colonia. I kick my feet and push at the water with my hands to flip my body. I swim downward. I look for life among the rocks and good from the hand of God.

A commercial truck beeps as it heads up, nose to the sky and dust trailing. On top the truck is a loudspeaker belting out a recorded sales pitch. The tinny sounds of music spill out from an open-air market. Pepsi signs cover the windows. A toddler in a diaper plays on the road. The truck beeps as it squeezes confidently past, just shy of the baby’s hand. I shudder at my imagination. Small children carry even smaller children across the road behind the truck. They run in and out of markets like bugs scurrying at sudden light, always carrying something too big — a sibling, a trash bag, a 5-gallon bottle of water. The incline is steep, and the smell of a wood fire mingles with the smell of garbage.

A house in la Colonia

I watch as a pregnant woman pauses to catch her breath, two children carrying eggs and groceries beside her. She rests a moment, a bag on her hip, before climbing an even steeper path up the mountain. Dogs trot easily past her. I’m watching Bailey who is next to me. Her eyes are big like they were on the plane, and I can tell she’s looking at the dogs. They’re emaciated, as if their ribs were just a hanger for their skin. They’re covered with open sores, abscesses in varying intensities of red. I wonder at how she’s managing this scene, how she’s making sense of this ironic mix of palpable beauty and blatant poverty? Mike talks with Enrique in the cab of the truck, but Bailey and I are silent. A chicken grazes at pebbles across the road from the pregnant mother, and Enrique stops the truck. We’ve reached the site of the well.

I’d not have picked it out. At the center of a small concrete pad isn’t a pipe but a heap of concrete that looks like a drip castle, a monument left by a child who spent a long day on the beach. But that haphazard castle of concrete marks the pipe and protects the well until we can build a house around it. Once we’ve constructed the house, we’ll knock off the concrete mound and sink a pump down the pipe, hundreds of feet of line unwinding as it descends towards water, clean water. Henry, who has met us at the site, tells us the good news. We’re getting more water than hoped. This well will surpass the old, dysfunctional well by three-fold. We’re to dig trench around the pad so we can lay the concrete blocks that will form the walls of the pump house.

Mike and I leave most of the crew at the well site, taking Johnny and Bailey with us to an adjacent dirt lot where twenty or so kids wait to meet us and play games. Enrique’s given us a large blue Rubbermaid tub full of rope and cones. Michael, a thirteen-year-old boy who speaks English, helps us set up a Four Square court. He remembers us from a few years back. He says one of our team had given him a Georgia Bulldogs hat.

The kids are sitting on a steal beam at the edge of a ravine waiting their turn. Johnny corrals the kids in line. A teenager named Rixy officiates the game and helps translate for us. Four kids play in the court strung with rope. The ball rolls through someone’s legs and down the easement into a large hole half filled with water. It is yellowish brown and smells of sewage and decay. A boy scuttles spider-like down a twisting of rusted metal beams into the swill pit and retrieves the ball. Play continues. The ball drips dry as young brown hands bounce it from square to square. The kids are grinning. The sun is hot.

We stop when everyone’s had a turn, and then tell the story of God’s love for David. Rixy translates. God gave David victory over the enemy-giant, Goliath and saved Israel. Michael’s head is slightly cocked, listening. We hand out flavored water and cookies before breaking for lunch.

As day fades to night, we sit on the porch under Henry and Frances’ house where Enrique teaches a Bible lesson. The night air is clear and mild, but the mosquitoes are hungry. Michael and Rixy sit in plastic chairs among a dozen others. We bat at mosquitoes. Enrique teaches in Spanish. We scan faces for body language. A mother, who looks decades older than her actual age, squeezes my hand and says, “Gracias.” Her eyes are sincere yet full of pain and an unknown hardship. She is Michael’s mother.

Back at Casa Isabella we lay on the dock under a starry sky. The shoreline is dark compared to Florida, the constellations remarkably bright. So many stars are visible, the constellations are harder to find. We gawk and giggle at a shooting star. We lay and watch, growing sleepy. One of us yawns, setting off a domino train of yawns and sighs. We’re tired in that lovely way of bodies that sweated and baked in the summer sun all day, that at the end of the day had something to show for their labor.

Day 2. We wake with the sun at six o’clock, veiled as it is by a mantle of stratonimbus. It’s quiet except for the intermittent comings and goings of a pickup truck with an engine that sounds like coffee percolating. The day is fresh, the water luring. On the dock, looking into glassy water, I can see all the way to the bottom. I feel as though I’m peering into an aquarium. Small fish dart in and out of the swaying grass.

I’m here out of loyalty and love for Mike, because he’d asked me to come last minute and was so boyishly excited about being here together with him and our daughter Bailey. It still feels like their trip. I’m ill prepared emotionally and spiritually but present nonetheless. We’ve left behind, in addition to three kids, a tentative, upended life. We just sold our house, just packed 15 years of accumulation into temporary storage. Standing in the emptied house, in the bedrooms where I’d nursed and rocked all four of my children, I’d wept. I was surprised at the hold a place could have on my heart. Before getting on the plane to come here, we’d had an offer accepted on a new house, finished an inspection and coordinated a series of repairs. We’d been living out of suitcases at the behest of friends and family and hotels and would be for many weeks more. There won’t be a home to go to when this week is finished, and I’m tired. I hadn’t planned on a trip to Roatan midst an already dizzying summer. But now we’re here, miles away from the chaos and loose moorings of Tallahassee, Florida.

Without internet and cell phones, we are free to leave home and cleave to this week-long mission. Yet I feel needy more than able, tired and discouraged more than energetic and encouraging. If Christ is to use me here, he must certainly invade a weary soul with a love that eclipses my distracted, self-consumed heart.

There is no wind as I stand on the dock, just an amazing stillness. The clouds are so low, I feel cocooned between them and the shiny floor of Caribbean at my feet. I remind myself to breathe. A faint ridge of mountain can be seen on the horizon, across the water. I don’t have my bearings yet, and I’m not sure if what I see is the mainland or something else. I notice the birds again, chirping an unfamiliar song. Elmer has brewed coffee, and folks from our team are beginning to assemble at the kitchen door. An animated Carlito is awake and pacing on the porch. Elmer and Andrea make him wait outside until breakfast is announced.

I step off the dock into a puddle of sea, then onto the yard of sand that extends carpet-like to Casa Isabella’s porch. I can hear laughter faintly, the smell of coffee getting stronger as the sand collects on my feet. Breakfast is ready, and all I have to do is rinse my feet and sit down to eat what someone else has prepared. Friends at the tables. My husband and daughter waiting on the porch. A view of paradise. The distraction of home quietly recedes like the gentle waves that lap Casa Isabella’s seaside boundary.

We rest today. Tomorrow we work.

Last July, I traveled to Roatan, Honduras with my husband Mike, oldest daughter Bailey and a team of family and friends. The following are journal entries from a week there.

Day 1. We arrive to a congested Customs line at an island airport, here on Roatan, off the coast of Honduras. A uniformed man with a gun holstered on his belt, stamps our passports. We follow the dense crowd to baggage carousels. Bags slowly circle on the worn, black belt. Passengers dart back and forth, picking up bags like birds snatching seeds from a feeder. We gather our bags and head out the double doors towards the sun. Henry and Frances from Living Water for Roatan meet us outside, in a hot breeze thick with salt and the smell of diesel. Old Toyotas sputter down the road, talking like women, an island Morse code of short and long beeps.

Henry introduces Enrique who drives us to Casa Isabella where we’ll eat and sleep all week. He’ll be our guide and translator for the week, coordinate local workers as needed. We park in the dirt driveway between the main house and the apartments. Enrique speaks English as he introduces Carlos, who owns Casa Isabella and lets its apartments to groups like ours. In orange stucco and whitewashed Roman columns, she sits twenty or so feet up the sandy shore on the Caribbean Sea. Coconut palms dot the sand yard. The unfamiliar sing-song of the birds here remind me we’re not in Florida.

Ten-year-old Carlito has come from Florida too. We meet him within seconds of climbing out of the truck. His mom lives in Orlando but has sent him here to Casa Isabella, to his dad Carlos for the summer. He haunts the house and grounds with the antics of a boy with ADHD, a boy whose friends are too far away to help him stave off the boredom of summer. We unpack and set off to explore the dock, Carlito at our heels.

Andrea is Carlos’ older daughter. She’ll cook our meals and keep the house running. Her boyfriend Elmer helps. They work side by side in the kitchen, cutting vegetables. Elmer’s hands are badly scarred from a machete. He fusses at Carlito. Elmer believes discipline will drive the impishness out of Carlito.

Well drilling

Before coming, we’d arranged everything with Henry. My brother-in-law’s church had made a large contribution to a project here. Friends and family wrote checks. We’d wired the money to dig a new well in La Colonia, an impoverished community set up on the hill along eroding, dirt roads. The nearest well was producing water once every ten days. We’d timed our trip to follow the well drilling rig by a few days, bringing a team of strong backs and willing hands to finish the work. But mostly we came because of Bailey.

Our oldest child, she’d heard our stories from past trips and set her thoughts and prayers on the people of La Colonia. She was persistent, eventually persuading her dad to organize a third trip to Roatan. This time, we’d raise funds to build another well. This time, we’d dig where the people were the poorest and hardest to get to, where they most suffered from the effects of dirty water. This time, fourteen-year-old Bailey would come too. I’d watch her wide eyes and giggles as the plane ascended through the clouds over Atlanta and banked to the south. And now I watch wide eyes again, as she strains to swallow the experience whole — the glittering Caribbean, the smells and sounds of Roatan.

The men meet to discuss plans for the week, and it’s decided we’ll hold a private church service at Casa Isabella in the morning. Then we’ll tour La Colonia and Nurse Peggy’s clinic. Monday we’ll start work on a pump house to enclose the well and gather kids up on the hill. We’ll love on them and tell them stories about God’s love.

To fill a page with words, useful words, is to find reverb deep down in the soul. It’s to strum that one singular note that makes creation sing along. And to face the terrifying darkness and write upon it the Light is to participate in the most sacred of work. It is a work I’d like to do.

But it’s not so easy. Shy, elusive inspiration. Sometimes it is nowhere to be found. Creativity can neither be captured in time nor wrangled to a list. It evades any attempt to harness it, resists any attempt at force. Instead it can only be coaxed out, patiently drawn from hiding, the bullies of agenda and clock and past and future sent indefinitely away. It’s painstaking work. And all can be lost in an instant with one move, one move that’s a hair too quick or a nudge too forceful. And the coaxing must begin all over again.

I’ve no patience for it tonight, though for it I am so hungry. I am too busy to play its games. I miss it and its intoxicating highs. But it makes me stop too long. It requires too much. Boredom is too expensive to indulge so freely. To cosset this muse is to barter and steal, to trade necessities like sleep and work. I cannot always make the sacrifice. So, like a peevish child, the muse is silent. And I sit before a blinding emptiness, nursing my bad temper at these games I’m made to play. Damn the game. Damn the art. Damn the words and the stupid page.

Hide if you want. Or come and find me, if you dare.

Cooperation. Friendliness. Two traits that in tandem make a difference both for the travelers and the agents who have to deal with them. When an agent’s day can go like this, it makes a more pleasant day for everyone.

The converse is also true. One fowl attitude can ransack the whole travel experience. The woman in front of me on one plane was boasting about her behavior on her last flight. She was seated in front of a family with small children who were apparently kicking her seat. The woman said, “I had to give those parents a training lesson on how to parent. When I told them about managing their kids, the dad answered, ‘They’re just kids.’” She went on to describe her response to that. The next time her seat got kicked, she yelled and tossed part of her drink over the back of her seat on the family behind. “I figured,” she concluded, “that if they were going to make my flight miserable, I may as well make theirs miserable too.”

It’s hard to travel with kids. This I know well. It’s hard for kids to behave perfectly when their normal sleep and eating schedules are thrown off by travel. It’s hard for parents to parent perfectly when they’re tired too and just trying to survive the trip. And I’m even one who thinks that as a generation, we’re doing a pretty poor job of raising kids to be respectful, polite and self-disciplined!

Sometimes we parents give in to a kid’s demands knowing full well that it’s rewarding their bad behavior, reasoning it will get them to be quiet and not bother the lady in front of them. Yet I also know, as a parent (and not an awesome one at that), the job isn’t about getting kids to behave perfectly in public but about teaching them how. And there’s a difference. Trying to get kids to behave perfectly in public focuses only on the moment at hand and cares only about immediate results. But teaching kids means enduring the public humiliation of the moment and using it as yet another teaching opportunity. It’s looking at the long-term results, not the short-term gain.

This is the burden of parenting kids who must one day leave home and be constructive human beings. It’s not always easy. And when a feisty passenger in the seat in front of you tosses unsolicited criticism and soda at you and your family because your child is acting like a kid instead of a constructive adult, it’s spirit crushing. It’s demoralizing. And it just doesn’t help anyone.

But it’s like a salve on an open sore when an empathetic bystander takes the time to say, “Honey, I know it seems crazy now, but these days will pass. It’s hard work but keep it up. Don’t worry about what everyone else around you is thinking. You’re doing okay.”

The woman in front of me, boasting of her parent-training techniques, didn’t know what the gate agent knew. She didn’t trust that a family might be trying really hard to keep everyone happy. She failed to comprehend how an empathetic word could have bolstered that little family’s spirits and made the whole trip a whole lot more pleasant – for everyone. She failed to see the irony of her own childish behavior, throwing her soda at children to teach them a lesson.

For any time I saw a child whining or throwing a hissy fit in public and quietly judged the parents, I am so sorry. I hope to be an encourager. I hope to be cooperative and friendly, one who lifts a spirit instead of tearing one down. I hope to be the kind of person who behaves better than the myriad of grown-up children acting badly on airplanes, then boasting about it.

(And I’m climbing off my slippery little soapbox now.)