My Verbal Attack

The kids, Tim and I stopped by Cub Foods after our naps on Sunday. We were in desperate need of groceries, and had eaten out almost every meal that weekend, mostly due to birthday celebrations!
As we were loading up the groceries in the cart, Peter had gone over to the lottery machine and the ATM machine and was pushing all of the buttons on them. I asked him to stop and he deliberatly continued to push them, then turned and looked at me as if to say 'Ha! I got in one more!'. I said 'Ok, Peter, you disobeyed Mommy, so let's go to the car.' He knew that he was about to get a spanking. Besides this whole new world of lies, diliberate disobediance is our second big battle with Peter lately.
Now, I held his hand to cross the parking lot, but he was not crying or pulling on my hand, or screeming or anything of the sort (for later varification) We walked to the car, I realized that Tim had the keys, so we sat on the curb next to our car and started talking about sin and what it means when we sin and who it hurts when we sin. A conversation that I'm trying to have BEFORE taking the easy way out and just spanking him and getting that part over with. He is at the point in his little life where he is begining to understand things a whole lot better, so talking through his discipline has really helped in his training.
As we were talking, a man (stranger) came around the corner of our car and started to lecture me. Obviously thinking that I was alone at the grocery store. He then started, with one hand raised in the air, saying "Lady, just leave the kid alone. Let him just be a kid he doesn't know any better" I was appauled! I stood up and started by letting him know that the conversation that I was having between MY son and I was NONE of his business, and then went on to tell him that I was following the Biblical principle for discipline and that we believed that WE (meaning Tim and I) are under GOD'S law and HE has given us His word to follow. - which really was the Holy Spirit talking through me, because I was SO angry that he was saying this to me, IN FRONT of Peter. He started to inch his way closer, now yelling at me, so I told Peter to get into the car. I had no idea where this might have gone. I looked around for Tim, and saw that he was close enough to the car for me to call him over. He, later, said that while he and James were making their way to the car, he just thought that I was talking with a man in the parking lot. Which is NOT uncommon at all. Peter likes to get some public attention, often.
I, then, motioned to Tim and asked him to come quickly and to get this man off my back. Tim asked him what seemed to be the problem and the man started ranting and raving about how we aren't supposed to HIT our children (odd. . .I haven't even SPANKED mine yet!) and said that he had lost his son, at 11, and he has learned, from that, that we need to just leave our kids alone. Tim, wisely said, "Well, I am sorry for your lose, but this has nothing to do with you, so I suggest that you walk away and leave us alone" A little intimadated by Tim's heighth, he turned, mummled some profanity under his breath, and walked to his car. I was furious!
I, literally, was shaking. I got into the car and noticed a car moving slowly in front of ours. It was that man, and he pulled out his phone and took a picture of our car!!! WHAT!?!?!?
Thank the LORD . . we bought this car without a front licence plate and haven't bought the tools to put one on again, so he didn't get a thing besides our car color and an angry women inside the car.
I couldn't believe that happened to us! I was embarrassed, apauled and angry. Tim made me promise to never leave any story without him by my side, which I agreed to quickly. I don't feel safe in this world anymore. I cannot believe that there are people in this world who would assume some nonsense!
You know, it's not enough that we, as Mothers, have a incredibly oversensitive world that we are raising our children in, but now we have to live in the fact that our parenting may be insulted and rediculed in public!?! What ever happened to people noticing the GOOD that we are trying to do? This is not an easy job, and I know that the man was wrong in his thinking and misinterpreting, but on the way home I just felt lousy. Tim talked me out of feeling this way, but it's so hard with the pressures of parenting in this fallen world, so I surely did not appreciate the mocking in front of children.
On a lighter side, after I got into the car, Peter said "So. . .I don't have to get my spanking?" - turkey!