How?

Daniel and his class have been making a “huge” card for a sweet little curly-haired darling in Daniel’s kindergarten class.  “June is sick.”  (Her name’s not June.  And she’s not sick.)  “We’re making a card to tell her that we love her and we miss her and we wish she was better.”
Sweet little ‘June’ was abused.  She was strangled and hit.  Blunt-force-trauma, hit.  Half-of-her-skull -removed, hit.  By her ‘mother’.  Allegedly.  Was is a mere ‘fall’?  I am not here to judge that, or her.  I just ache for this little one who is struggling now.
I smile sweetly and tell Daniel it is so kind that the class is making her a huge card.  I hug him and kiss him and tell him how much I love him.
I get angry and frustrated at times.  Of course I do.  Daniel always asks me, “Are you mad at me?”  It literally brings him to tears if I am cross with him.  The other night I went it to kiss him goodnight after a particularly trying evening.  “Are you mad at me?”  I told him I wasn’t mad at him, but I was frustrated.  He started to cry.  I asked him why, and he said, “Because you are frustrated.”  It tore at my heart that I let MY frustrations get the best of me, to the point that it would injure his tender feelings.
So, back to sweet little ‘June’.  I help out in Daniel’s class, and have spent those afternoon with Daniel, ‘June’ and dozens of other children.  Kindergarten teachers deserve a very special place in Heaven for the sweet work that they do with these little people.  After my 2 hours are up, I feel a little dizzy and a little overwhelmed.  :O)  Wowza!  I certainly don’t feel anger at these little dudes and dudettes…but at the end of the day you see them smiling and giggling as they line up to meet back up with the mothers who delivered them there just hours before.  You have to smile.  You just have to.  It had never crossed my mind that any of them would be going ‘home’ to somewhere dangerous.
In a talk from our Prophet, Thomas S. Monson, he says:

“ ‘Anger doesn’t solve anything.  It builds nothing, but it can destroy everything.’  We’ve all felt anger.  It can come when things don’t turn out the way we want.  It might be a reaction to something which is said of us or to us.  We may experience it when people don’t behave the way we want them to behave.  Perhaps it comes when we have to wait for something longer than we expected.  We might feel angry when others can’t see things from our perspective.  There seems to be countless possibilities for anger….To be angry is to yield to the influence of Satan.  No one can make us angry.  It is our choice.  If we desire to have a proper spirit with us at all times, we must choose to refrain from becoming angry.  I testify that such is possible.  Anger, Satan’s tool, is destructive in so many ways….May we make a conscious decision, each time such a decision must be made, to refrain from anger and to leave unsaid [or undone] the harsh and hurtful things we may be tempted to say.”  (School Thy Feelings, O My Brother.  November 2009)

And I always think of the scripture Matthew 18:6  “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”

OUCH!  I’m going to beg for forgiveness for my own lack of patience and pray for Daniel’s little classmate to heal – body and spirit.