On Kindness...

 I recently started reading To Heaven and Back By Dr Mary Neal. I haven't gotten very far, but somewhere around Chapter One, in the context of choosing how to approach our lives, this phrase jumped off the page:




React with Love





Oh yeah.

Now I remember.

That's what we're supposed to do.


I talk to my kids alot about kindness. Of the many things I want them to be, it's the most important. And yet, sometimes, I realize that I do a crappy job of teaching by example.

I'm impatient. I get overwhelmed. And irritable. I have a family to raise. And a husband. And a job. And a business to help run. There are naps to take (unfortunately not mine). And a house to clean. And laundry to do. Always laundry to do. And some days--most days--I just crave a little silence in my life.

And most days it's really hard to find it.

God help the people who show up at my door when I'm craving silence. Or who keep me in the check out line too long when I'm impatient. Or who ask me to do one more thing when I'm overwhelmed. Not to mention the select few who somehow possess the ability to make my head spin (no, of course you don't fit into that category).

No, I don't say anything unkind to the people in these situations.

Most of the time.

But I don't really go out of my way to be kind to them either.

Which isn't the way I'm supposed to be if I value kindness so much in my children.

I mean, we're supposed to love our neighbors, right? And there's no clause that says "except if you're  impatient, or overwhelmed, or irritable, or craving silence, or they possess the ability to make your head spin".


Trust me. That clause is not in there. If it was, I would have found it.

Cause I've looked.

Fortunately, there's also no clause that says "except if she's impatient, or overwhelmed, or irritable, or craving silence, or she thinks you possess the ability to make her head spin".




React With Love



Ok, so I'll keep trying.


Some day I may even get it right.