It's funny how important it is, when staying home with kids, to be able to turn a deaf ear. I'm not saying 24/7, but rather being able to wisely select when to listen or not to listen to people.
As a quick aside, it is NEVER okay to turn said deaf ear to either one's spouse or God.
That said, please allow me to discuss this important tool in more detail.
Thursday at our house is a rather busy day. It is laundry day. I don't really dread it. After all, the machines do most of the work. I just have to bring the clothes down to the washer, switch them over to the dryer, and then bring them back upstairs. The tricky part is folding. I can't do it in the living room because Cynthia will pull all the clean clothes out of the basket. She will also decimate the piles of folded clothes, if left to her own devices. The best place I've found to fold laundry is on our bed.
The extra added benefit of this is that it actually forces me to make our bed, for a change.
Unfortunately, it takes about 20 minutes to sort and fold an entire load. This means 20 minutes (at least) with my eyes off Cynthia and Esther in the living room. I love them and trust them, but not this much. Also, Cynthia tends to miss me if I'm gone too long. Hence, I will usually bring her into the bedroom and let her crawl around on the floor. She loves it and, after using the ottoman to seal off the half of the room with a power outlet, it's actually safe. I usually ask Esther if she wants to come in, too. She usually does. We close the door. All goes well.
Several weeks ago, I asked Esther if she wanted to come in and she said that no, she wanted to be out so she could continue to listen to a CD. I obliged and went about my chore. Cynthia was in the room, scooting around, the door was shut, and all proceeded according ot schedule. All of a sudden, Esther started screaming. I heard her running down the hall. Since two year olds aren't exactly considerate of others (ie babies who might or might not be in front of the door she's about to open), I shouted through the door for 1) her to stop and 2) her to tell me what was the problem. She said that her CD had stopped and I needed to take it out.
It's a big deal to her. The CD stopping itself is not enough. It has to come out of the player. However, I was a bit busy. I told her this. She proceeded to continue to scream at the top of her lungs. I turned a deaf ear, zoned her out, finished the laundry, and she (believe it or not) survived.
This is very important. To a two year old, many minor (aka unabashedly unimportant) incidents are tragedies. If I can address them, I will. However, I can't divert my attention every time that her foot gets wet, she doesn't have a big enough blanket to cover her stuffed animals, I call her by her name (instead of cat, or cinderella, or whatever she decides she wants to be called that particular day) or her CD ends. In this situation, Cynthia needed my attention more than Esther. It's a fine line. I don't want to ignore Esther completely but, she needs to know that it's not good to constantly shout 'WOLF' when there is no emergency.
Another example was when I was giving Cynthia her bath today. Esther, again, started screaming. Seems she couldn't close a box of some sort or other. Again, the deaf ear was used.
Turning a deaf ear isn't just for my children. Sometimes you get guys like this who need to make their feelings known.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WPVxndUcHQ
I understand that people are entitled to their opinions and I have no problems listening to advice of fellow Christians, however, when hearing such 'pearls of wisdom' as this, it is very important to discern if this is God talking to me or just a blowhard who wants to impose his own personal will. In this case, it was the latter.
The Bible is great for situations like this. The verse his entire argument is centered around is 1 Timothy 5:8. But if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those of his household, he has denied the faith, and is worse than an unbeliever.
All of 1 Timothy 5 is about honoring widows. Hence, this verse means that, if you have a widow in your family, you should take care of her. Culturally, in Biblical times, if a woman's husband died, she would have little ability to feed herself and such. Hence, it fell to her family to do this. If you didn't take care of your mother after your father died, then you are considered worse than an unbeliever.
Very cherry picky, eh?
I am sure he has been informed of all this. Yet, he continues to teach it as fact that Christian men should work, entirely based around that one verse. This is bordering on, if not being, heretical teaching and, if I ever spoke with him directly, should tell him this. However, it is not for either myself or Jen to worry about his false teachings, especially when it concerns making decisions for our family.
I merely turn a deaf ear to Mr. Driscoll's teachings. They mean nothing to me.
I just pray for him as I pray for the girls.
Because just because I turn a deaf ear to all of them sometimes doesn't mean that I don't hear them. It just means that there's a lot more important things that require my attention.
God bless you all.
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