Old “Log Eye”, according to Paul Aldrich, is a funny ol’ critter. He roams around in every home, every church, every business, every human mind. He’s sort of a weird looking dude because he has a magnifying glass in front of one eye, a big bowed-up log in the other eye and a sharp pointy finger always sticking out into somebody else’s faults. The first word out of his mouth is always “you”.
Man, I fight with log eye in my own mind every day. The big chump! He makes me critical of my wife and kids in a way that I want to take the log out and hit him with it! One time when one of my boys was young, I was “rantin’ and ravin’” about something (hillbilly term for overly critical and overly vocal) and my sweet wife stopped me dead in my tracks. “Honey,” she said to me, “your son sees himself in your eyes.” Oooo, that hurt. But, she was right! “Log Eye” was ruling my life that day!
Billy Sprague, after a short year or two of marriage, told me that, “the adjustment phase of marriage is over as soon as both parties give up on trying to change each other.”
Funny thing about pointing your finger at someone ... when you do it, there are always three fingers pointing right back at you.
As parents, we have to teach principles and we have to correct Biblically incorrect behavior, but for all members of a family, the motto I like is:
“Catch each other in the act of doing something good and tell ‘em about it.”