Teamwork and Anger Management

Calvin and Jessica at Homecoming

Three of the Littles

Big Foot Lodge in his final resting place 

Scott, Me, Stefanie and Kathryn at Stefani's Rehearsal Dinner

Origami training for the workshop leaders

The Entire Eastview Football team kneeling in prayer for an injured teammate

Calvin tapping off the band

A trip down memoriy lane

This girl turned 18 yesterday. Unbelievable. 

Baking in his jammies

Diggin ferns--LOVE this old photo--miss my grandma

SO BIG

Uncle Dave's way of picking apples, ahem, that's my husband up there. . . 2005?

Baby Mary. Her birthmark is all gone

Christmas 2004

Life is spinning by, isn't it?
My niece turned 18 yesterday. Her senior pictures are on Bill's camera, not on my computer yet. . . but this is not acceptable. She's actually just three and Bill and I are flying her back and forth from Texas.

My uncle turned 75 last weekend. That's 75 balloons.  75 candles. 75 years. We got to surprise him in Grundy Center, Iowa.

Today I'm missing my 30th high school class reunion. Read that and don't do the math and then forget about it.

Calvin is 6'1". This too is math that doesn't compute.

My studio is back to having a lot of little people. And babies in arms. Sweet.

We learn and learn and learn from our students, and one of the myriad things that I learned from these kids that are graduating from college and getting married is that there is no stopping time.

Part of enjoying the passage of time has a lot to do with managing our emotions. Part of being a grown up and a parent and maybe even a leader has a lot to do with managing one emotion in particular.

Anger.

Seems kinda dramatic doesn't it?

But anger is the sneaky little guy that creeps into our interactions every day. Dr. Suzuki asks us to keep an anger graph. Track our anger. One of the fruits of the spirit is being slow to anger.

This means disciplining our kids without letting anger sneak in. Correct the behavior. Correct the behavior. Correct the behavior. Don't get sucked in. This is our job. To correct the behavior. Turn down the anger and turn up the consequences.

The other big tool for anger management is listening without reacting. This is one I work on everyday. Sometimes with the Suzuki Association of Minnesota. I confess, truly, when someone emails me a concern, my first reaction is often irritation. How could they complain about something when I've worked so hard on it? I'm sorry for the times when I shoot back a snarky email. And I have done that from time to time. When I'm being my best self, I just listen. And wait till the snark passes. Put us back on the same team. We are all on the same team.

I was feeling snarky at the football game. I'm not into high school football. Surprised? Friday night as Mary was reading her book in the stands and I was posting snarky things on Facebook waiting for the band to perform, Eastview scored a touchdown. After the cheering, it became apparent that an Eastview kid was down on the field. Without hesitation and with total unity, the entire team on the sidelines and those still on the field dropped to their knees to pray for that kid. I can't even write about this. Many of those jerseys joined hands. They stayed there until the kid was able to get up and walk off the field. A cloud of prayer.

We are all on the same team. I believe that this might be the single most important thing to remember in daily living. I'm on my kids' team. I'm on my husband's team. I'm on my studio's team. I'm on SAM's team.

Another friend has cancer. Curable. But it still sucks.
Life is too short. Kids grow up too fast.
We have to take care of our anger.
We are all on the same team.