Faith Filled Family Magazine December 2016 | Page 20

VICTORY OVER THE

Polite Put Down

BY TAMMY CROFT
It’s two weeks before
Thanksgiving and you are
trying to pull your family together to lock down
plans for dinner. Getting
everyone together at the
same place at the same
time has always been a
task, but there’s one sister
who wants to make it impossible. For years it was
always a given that everyone would meet at mom’s
house where she would
delicately create an awesome meal all by herself.
She could single handedly
leave you stuffed, happy
and ready to lounge the
rest of the day. Years of
expecting this was great
until all of a sudden the
day comes when you realize that mom is really
older, slower and having
a much harder time doing

this work alone. After coming to this conclusion, you decide to pull together all of the siblings and make a decision to change plans this
year.

There are five children, all of which have decent cooking skills and you of course, have the
most. Therefore, they all look to you to prepare
the menu and make the one item that is the
most important part of the meal; the dressing.
So you give everyone directions as to what they
need to bring and everyone agrees and has no
problems except sister number three. We will
call her Tabatha. Tabatha can be impossible
when trying to get her cooperation. She never
gets anywhere on time, if she even makes it
without having a hundred excuses as to what
came up. She never has enough money to take
care of her part of anything, so one of the other
siblings will wind up paying her way. She argues about everything that you ask of her, and
she will wait until it is absolutely imperative that
she take care of things right then, before she
will begin the task of coming through for you.
She gets on everyone’s nerves and it takes all
that the other siblings have to not fuss at her or
worse, every time that are together.

When Tabitha was a child, everyone knew what
to expect from her and would most often make
excuses for her behavior because she was
poor little Tabitha. No matter which one she
would make angry, all the rest would gang up to
protect her because, as they would say: “She’s
trying, just leave her alone.” As time went on,
however, everyone was beginning to get tired