We have a new favorite book at our
house. Max Lucado's, "You Are Special" has such a simple,
but powerful message for kids and grown-ups alike. The wooden Wemmick
people go around giving each other stickers for beauty and talent, or dots
for failure and flaws. They make assumptions about each other based
on those stars and dots. One of the Wemmicks with lots of dots starts to
believe that he is worthless and unlovable. He tries to find out how to get
the dots not to stick and learns that when we spend our time focusing on
God and and who we are in His love, we don't have room for the negative things
we tell ourselves or hear from others.
The stickers only stick if they
matter to you.
We work so hard to teach the kids
important lessons: about God, about how to treat others and about how loved and
cherished they are. But, what we don't always notice are the things they are
learning just by watching: how uncomfortable we get accepting
compliments, how we rush through life, how we treat others,
or even our bad habits like biting our nails.
The other night, I had
one of those parenting moments when you feel like you just got punched in the
stomach. Owen and I were reading books before bedtime and he had his
fingers in his mouth. I told him not to do that and asked the question
that I already knew the answer to: "where did you learn that?"
"From you,
mommy".
Not my proudest
moment. We agreed that he would not put his fingers in his mouth and he
would remind me not to do it either. But, wow. How easily my issues and struggles can be
transferred to them.
They are watching. What are we putting our time and energy into? What messages do we send ourselves about our worth and value? What bad habits do we need to break?
The words we convey won't have lasting impact if our actions don't speak louder.
"One's philosophy is not best expressed in
words; it is expressed in the choices one makes." ~Eleanor Roosevelt
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