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The Real Deal

Things are about to get real here on this blog. I text the following words to a friend:

"The boys are insane. Seriously. I took them to the dollar tree to get stuff for our Operation Christmas Child boxes and literally want to pound my head against the wall. I wish taking them to do stuff like that (service project stuff) was all sunshine and rainbows and everyone was happily skipping down the aisles truly understanding what it means to give and have a servants heart. But noooooooo...no. We play with plungers and ask for every ding dang toy and then act like wild banshees who have never been let out of their cages. For the love of Peter, Paul, and Mary."

Y'all, parenting is no joke. I like to post the cutesy pictures of my boys sweetly snuggling by my side but real life doesn't always play out that beautifully. Don't get me wrong, we did have some fun picking stuff out to give and I did laugh when they were playing with the plungers. However, when I got home I was a little disappointed. I wanted my boys to WANT to give and serve not just do it because Mommy told them to.

As we were packing our boxes, Wyatt huffed and puffed stomping away from his box proclaiming, "It's not fair!" When I asked him what wasn't fair he told me that it wasn't fair that these kids get a box full of stuff and he gets nothing. Insert face into palm and flooding thoughts about how I must be completely failing at this whole parenting thing. A lightbulb suddenly went on in the empty space in my brain and I realized that my five year old has absolutely no point of reference. He has no concept of the fact that it is not normal for people to live in big giant houses and have everything at their disposal. I was going about this all wrong. I was asking a five, six, and nine year old to understand something that is so very foreign to them.

I realized that these boys needed to understand where and how these children lived. They needed to see that life and happiness isn't measured by all stuff we have. With Wyatt in my lap and Jack and Grady by my side, we looked at pictures of how these people lived. You know what my boys noticed most? It wasn't the tin houses or piles of garbage that surrounded make-shift homes. They noticed that the people and children in the photos were smiling. They saw the deplorable conditions these people lived in, yet they still had smiles on their faces. They (kind of) got it.

You know, all to often I expect my kids to understand and do very grown-up things. I cannot wrap my head around so many things including that fact that children live in such horrific conditions. It absolutely breaks me in two. If I cannot fathom life outside of my own comforts, how can I expect my children to?

I had a verse hanging on our wall that I saw everyday. The sign hung at the top of the stairs on the way to all the boys rooms and play areas. The verse is found in Proverbs 22:5 and says, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." I read that verse daily. I guess sometimes I want my kids to just know stuff and skip the training part but that's not real life. So, I will continue to train my kids and hopefully lead by example even if some days end in me banging my head against the wall.

Love & Blessings,
Meg

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