The Hedgehog and the Christmas Lights

He was having a hedgehog kind of day. He was cute like a hedgehog, but just as prickly. I couldn't figure it out. It was Christmas Eve, the day before all my son's waiting would come to a glorious end, and yet he was bristly. I was exhausted from resorting to verbal correction that resembled a game of Whack-a-Mole all day long. "Don't irritate your brother!" WHACK. "If you act that way, no one will want to play with you." WHACK. "Mommy needs a little bit of space." WHACK. WHACK. WHACK. 

"All right," I thought, "Maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe he needs some one on one time." Out came Uno Attack, and the bonding commenced. Much better. Until I won round 1.

"Mom, one more time!" I was already worn. I didn't have "one more time" in me. But I consented. "All right, Honey, I will play one more time with you, but then Mommy is going to quit." Round 2 went by faster than the first, with me winning again. "One more time?" he coaxed. "No," I replied,  "I told you after this round, I would quit." I watched as he sulked over to Lucy (our Boston Terrier) with a sour face. He clutched her little body with his left hand and sighed. 

A frustration soaked inner dialogue began in my mind. "I played the extra round. He is still NOT HAPPY!! ARGH!!" I retreated to the laundry room to sort out the clothes, and my thoughts. "What is with him?!" My little hedgehog...precious, but boy was he prickly at times!

That evening held some much needed time out of the house. My hubby drove us around to hunt for Christmas lights. We found some along the way to our final destination, but our last stop took our breath away.

We pulled up to a beautiful house in a quaint town, and to our delight, we saw a display that was exceptional. The lights, the music, the colors...it was a feast for the senses. Every eave and corner was covered with lights that danced a choreographed blitz with every drum beat, bass thump and electric guitar solo. 

I looked back at my little hedgehog, and much to my surprise, his eyes were fixed...but not on the resplendent light show we were watching. He was staring at the house across the street with sparse and plain solid lights.

"No, Honey, look at THIS house!" we cried as we pointed to the rock star house. "On the left side!! See???"

He stubbornly kept his eyes fixed on the plain Jane house, ignoring all our pleas to have him join our vantage point.

Inner dialogue: "ARGH!! He is so stubborn!!!" 

I allowed myself to be sucked back in to the music and light show that danced in fiery sequences over the house and lawn. With reluctance, I turned once more to the right to see the house that my son was staring at. It was a joke in comparison. I sunk into contemplation.

Surface symptoms can be like the rock star house. My son's behavior that night was flashing with inflammation. Cranky, irritable, button pushing, SCREAMING for attention. Like the house with the light and music show, it held my negative energy. It was so easy to get sucked into it, to roll with it, to tap my finger to the coordinating song rhythm. And yet, there, directly across the street, the plain-Jane house stood, silently, and in a non-flashy way, starkly contrasting the Las Vegas marquis house. 

I began to think on the subtle truths about my son. The steady truths that weren't as obvious, but still were just as there. Like the stationary lighted plain-Jane house, I had to purposefully decide to strain my neck to see them, because the flashy irritations were compelling.

He is probably excited about Christmas and doesn't know what to do with that excitement.

He desperately wants attention, and even negative attention works.

He was caught being prickly all day, but I had never really caught him being precious.

He attached himself to the one person who, in his mind, had the best chance of understanding him: me.

He desperately needs to be LOVED in spite of himself.

I was so sad...sad for him, because I fear he didn't get what he was desperately longing for, and sad for myself that I let the flashy inflammatory behaviors eclipse the steady truth about my son; he needs a Mom to love him through the prickly, and to call out the precious inside him.

Fast forward to deeper in the evening, and I was snuggling with my hedgehog. His skin was clean, smooth, and smelling like soap. His hair was damp from the shower. That day was one that ended in mutual apologizing and mutual affirmation of love. "Will you forgive me?" I asked him. "I'll ALWAYS forgive you," he replied with a content smirk. 

At the end of this bittersweet day, the slice of life that I'm savoring is that I can't get caught up in the bright and boisterous surface, and ignore the plain-Jane truth. I am praying that from this point on, the Holy Spirit will help me see through the choreography of chaos that comes my way, and place my fingers on the pulse of the matter. Because although that day had a sweet finish, every tomorrow after that is a new day of deciding. Deciding to turn my gaze from the unlovely to the lovely. Deciding to see the best, in spite of the worst. Deciding to strip down the smoke and mirrors to see the muted truth. God help me. God help all of us. 

Those who get caught up in the distracting light show of life's ugliness are a dime a dozen. Those who choose instead to see the ugliness as a chance to love are a precious few. May we, with God's power, be counted among the latter. May we cup the world's hedgehogs in loving hands, and most especially, the little ones who share our burrows. May the plain-Jane truth about them be ever in our just-as-stubborn gaze. And may our lives live out the truth that we, grown up hedgehogs, are loved by a God who fixes His relentless gaze of grace on us.