I was going over some old Catches this morning and came across one I could have used again. This was an experience I had parenting Chandler six years ago and a lesson I obviously haven’t learned yet because I just lost it in a similar way two days ago. Paul wrote, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart” (Colossians 3:21), which means it must be an easy thing to do or he wouldn’t have brought it up. Since I benefitted from my own words again, I thought maybe you would too.

By golly, that does look like something under his nose!

Sometimes I can get so exasperated… Just ask my children.

Earlier today, I pulled up in front of the office building where my 7-year-old receives tutoring three times a week. Only problem was, he didn’t want to go today, and refused to get out of the car. Stubborn? You don’t know the half of it.

So I got out of the car and went inside to inform the teacher hoping Chandler would follow me in. Nothing doing. The teacher went out to talk to him and I stayed inside and fumed. When no progress was made in a few minutes, I went back out and got madder. I could feel the volume of my voice going up. I could hear myself giving him a grocery list of arguments that were all my issues, not his. (Thinking back on it, I think we had two children here and no parent!) And the more frustrated I got, the more stubborn he became.

I decided to go inside and call my wife. “Whatever you do,” she said after the brilliant suggestion of having the teacher start their program in the car, “Smile, don’t wrinkle up your forehead, calm down, and wipe off that little piece of poop from under your nose.” I looked at my face in the window and sure enough, there was a little piece of something under my nose, my forehead resembled a road map and my smile was somewhere on the freeway a few miles back.

Have you ever noticed how easy it is to get trapped inside your own patterns? That’s when it takes someone else to pull you out. We can’t always see ourselves very well. That’s why we need someone who can see us and tell us the truth. If you don’t have someone like this in your life, maybe you need to give someone permission to be that person for you.

By the time I found my smile, smoothed out my forehead and wiped off that piece of whatever from under my nose, I looked outside to find Chandler and his teacher sitting out on the sidewalk going over his lessons.

Here’s what I learned from all this. 1) There’s usually more than one way to look at a thing. 2) How you are (attitude) is more than half the battle of figuring out what to do. 3) When you get stuck, call someone who knows you well enough to… well, you know, that thing under your nose…