An all-necessary change of heart

One weekend Klaus (my husband), Jozef (our son) and I went to Long Island, where his mother and his siblings live. We were supposed to leave Jozef with Klaus’ sister Carolyn for a week. Carolyn has two daughters and the younger one is Jozef’s age.

We drove as usual on Friday night, and I woke up when we were pulling into Klaus’ mother’s house. I was not happy about that, since I thought we were going to stay at Carolyn’s so that in the morning Jozef could go and play with his cousins for the whole day. Klaus hadn’t told me about his plans, nor had I told him what my expectations were.

When Saturday morning came, I was pretty vocal about my disappointment, which was fueled more by the fact that we couldn’t get hold of Carolyn to arrange to meet up. Klaus was getting very unhappy with my constant complaints and the list of “things to do” left by his sisters—a list, he maintained, that would take at least a week to finish.

Right in that moment I got a text from a member of my group where we share our faith together, saying how she was remembering to love her neighbor while waiting in a long check-in line at the airport. It was pretty uncomfortable for me to read it, since I knew I was far off from loving my neighbors.

But I initiated a change of heart and decided to start loving. To remove myself from the situation, I took Jozef to a nearby playground. While I was there, Carolyn reached out to me asking me to come over with Jozef and saying that he could stay for the night at her place.

Actually, I was still in the process of change: one voice wanted to say no and just remain as long as we wanted at the playground, but the good voice of reconciliation prevailed.

Later that day I talked to Klaus, and I said how sorry I was about the words spoken earlier, and he also said how frustrated he was with his to-do list.