It's a 24/7 thing!

Some people go to church for an hour on Sunday, call themselves "Christian" and then act in ways that are very unChristian the rest of the week. I remember calling my father out on this once when I was a kid. Sunday morning was church and Sunday school, and Sunday afternoon he was swearing. I knew that wasn't right. Swearing is kind of minor though, right? And he probably had a reason for it.

Many, many years ago I used to date a guy who I ended up working with. We both worked in human services, and once we took our client on vacation. We were working 24/7 for a week, even if we weren't always technically getting paid, we were still on the job. Once I caught my boyfriend early in the morning in a cranky mood. I was shocked. I didn't realize that he had an "on/off switch" regarding our client. I thought his upbeat personality was natural and easy. I didn't realize he was faking it for the job. I learned that week though. It was tough on both of us to be "on" 24/7, but we made it.

But where I'm going with this is that Al-Anon isn't just for when I am at the meeting, or when I'm reading the book, or when I'm interacting with the alcoholics and addicts in my life. It's 24/7. I need to always be practicing my program, and that means at 4am or 5am or 6am, when my 3 year old wakes me up, I need to use my program.

I didn't use profanity, but I wasn't at all compassionate for the kid either. Apologies won't help. She's not going to understand that even though mommy is a light sleeper anyway, trying to be reasonable with me at that hour is nearly impossible. She's only 3. She doesn't need to understand or have compassion for me. It's my job to understand and have compassion for her. I'm the parent, she's the kid, that's the way it is. Next time I'll try to do better. Nobody's perfect, and excuses and apologies can't undo the hurt from my words. When I'm awake at those hours I do not want to be bothered, period, but she's a kid. She's not an adult, she's got a free pass to ignore those boundaries of mine. She woke up, she needed a parent, and I should have been nicer. Next time I hope I am.