It was the best times. It was the worst of times.

If my boys had read Dickens, this is what they would have said Friday.  It seems there is a bit of a pandemic in my house.  I am not sure where the epidemic started, but believe me it's here.  We have a house filled with cutie little liars.  Sweet little liars that looked me in the face, straight into my eyes and lied.

Now I know you are going to say, don't overreact. Kids lie. It's part of growing up.  Those are both true statements. Kids lie.  But this to me is a little different.  It started small. Did you leave the milk out? Did you hit your brother. Then it is was did you do your homework to do you have any homework? All the way up to did you download inappropriate material on your iPod or use your DS when you were grounded?

I suppose my issue is not that they lied.  It's given a grace period and grace from punishment, the lie continued.  I guess for the first time in a long time I experienced a test of my ability to provide grace to those who were underserving. Talk about walking the walk.  I had to put my faith where my parenting was.

I let the cutie little liars see what their actions can do to people.  They saw me cry.

Those of you who know me, know I don't cry.  Pretty much ever.  I don't know other than for pain if my kids have ever seen me cry. Especially because I was sad, and certainly not for something they did.

The scene played out like this:

Me- "Are you lying?"
Child- "No, Mom. I swear, I am not lying."
Me- "Don't swear. Well, I happen to know you are lying. I have given you 72 hours to come clean with no punishment and now since you are continuing to lie to me, I want you to know that (insert waterworks and pause) you have (sniff, sniff) broken my heart."(I just sat there with my head bowed down and then quietly stood up and walk out of the room.)

Child- "Awww Mommy don't cry. I'm so sorry I lied.  I'll never do it again.  Yes it was me. I did it."

The scene went on a little longer, but the point is it took me not yelling, not screaming and not threatening.  It took real emotions.  Frankly, I was upset to the point of tears.  I didn't stage them. I let myself be emotional in front of my boys.  They saw first hand how there words and actions affected me. And I told them they broke my heart.  It was interesting to me, the breaking of our trust didn't bother them as much as seeing how they had hurt me.

Perhaps, seeing me upset is so much more real to them, than the esoteric idea of trust.  They can't see trust or faith, but they, just like the disciple Thomas, could see my hurt and sadness for what they had done.

I look forward to seeing what this week will bring.  Today is already off to great start with laundry.... I can't wait to see what tomorrow will bring.

Happy Laundry Day