When I Was a Child

The short video clip shows a woman in a grocery store pushing the cart. It's an advertisement for something, and after a short spiel the camera shot widens out to show a small child helping himself from the shelf. He has chips and some other child type item in his arms. Now, as he anticipates his mother's rejection of his choices, a tantrum look begins to appear on his face. However, as some of these clips are meant to do, the adult in the clip heads him off at the water fountain.

The woman throws herself down on the grocery store floor and begins to pitch the mother of all tantrums. The child, wide eyed and open mouthed stands aghast, plastered against the shelf, as his mother kicks and screams with abandon.  After a decent tantrum she picks herself up, walks back to her cart--the child puts his selections back on the shelf--and they walk on down the aisle together as if nothing had ever happened.

Funny--right?

It's like many things, funny on the stage or in the movies, but not always in real life.

For instance, a husband and wife that have been married, oh, say ten years give or take a few years. That's long enough to have made a decent start on a life together, perhaps they have begun to purchase a house, or a property, a car or two, maybe they have one or more children. Now one of them decides, you know what, I don't feel fulfilled. Or maybe they've fallen out of love. They decide to walk away from where they are--to just leave it all behind.

Well, now, let's just throw ourselves down on the grocery store floor and have a tantrum. It isn't just that when a couple goes through a divorce they both will lose everything, but what about the baggage?

As a couple unites in marriage they begin to bring their lives together, as it would seem, each person begins to put a little bit from themselves (and their previous single lives) into the pot. The scriptures tell us that a man and wife become one flesh, and studies show how literal that is. But it goes inside and out from bonding with each other, to buying things together, working for mutual good each for the other...So many things that can't be listed. That doesn't even cover the children that are brought into the picture. And now we're going to tear it all apart? Not real easy you aren't.

There are other ways adults can throw tantrums in relationships. It most often includes a healthy dose of self. At one time, back in the day when my daughter's daughter was a two-year old or prone to the throwing self on the floor stage, my daughter asked me, "Mom, do you think I ever look like that to God?"

I laughed. I'm sure not just my daughter, but everyone has those moments when we look like that. It causes me on occasion to take a deep breath and look at me.

1Corinthians 13:11 "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things. 12)  For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known."

Hallelujah! What a Savior!