Compassion and Kindness

I am not by nature a compassionate, kind, loving person. Drew and I used to kind of laugh about this because both of us have to work at these traits and neither of us are very good at working at them. We would both rather be snarky and sarcastic. But, God must be trying to get my attention. And, I am going to listen. In all honesty, I have been trying not to listen, and now he just keeps smacking me in the face with it, not in a mean way, in a humbling way.

Like this story. I was walking with my boys and my neighbor and her two girls, we were on our way to Blockbuster just leaving our houses, still on our street. There was a mamma outside with a baby in a bjorn, raking leaves. I push my stroller around said piles, smile and say hello and continue on my way. I thought I was being friendly because I smiled and said hello. My neighbor, stops, smiles, says hello, introduces herself and proceeds to invite them for dinner or just to get together sometime.

I am an ass. I have no excuse. I ask God for opportunities to show people his love and I smile and walk on by. I want to change that. I don't want to be an ass any longer.

My prayer for myself is to love my Lord more and for His love to come pouring through me.

Today, I was in a bit of a grumpy mood this morning. And of course, it could all be blamed on Drew. He told me I could do something myself, I could fold up that stupid Playhut tunnel (thanks, Mindy the kids love it!) and then he told me I could go to Sam's and get gas and milk and then go to Target to get overnight diapers for Kolby, and just check for a Wii (no Wii). He was not being mean to me, I just took it that way. I wanted to go to Super Wal-Mart and get everything in one stop and then still have time to take the kids to the library and let them play. He probably didn't really care where I went, he did think that it would maybe save us $5 to go to Sam's but maybe the time wouldn't be worth it. As we were leaving Target at 11:10 and arrived at the CLOSED library at 11:40, Sage had thrown a fit because I told him we didn't have time to go to the promised library, I was fuming at Drew for "making me go to Sam's and Target on the other stinkin side of town." Did you catch that the library was closed, for Lincolns birthday? Yeah, I was humbled. I tried to laugh about it with Sage. Silly mom and Sage, crying over it, getting mad about it.

And then I started thinking.

I am choosing to be grumpy. Is that what I want to do? No. I am choosing to make myself miserable. I want to choose joy. I prayed as I was driving home. Lord, help me to choose joy. Choose joy for me, because I can't do it for myself today. I am making my kids grumpy and showing them a horrible example. I decided to change my attitude. Just like I tell Sage to do.

As we got home, and Sage and Kolby started fighting over who knows what, I reminded myself that they hadn't chosen joy, so I needed to help them. I held Kolby for a while and got him interested in something then I went to talk to Sage about why he had hit Kolby and then dealt the appropriate discipline. Then, all three of us talked about how to choose joy. And then Sage put me in jail and we all felt better.

In our house, if you are grumpy, you go to jail! Watch out!

Back to Compassion. I have been reading Rocks in My Dryer for some time now. This week, she is blogging from Uganda. She is there with Compassion, an organization that helps kids in poverty. You or anyone can sponser a child, the money that you sponser them with each month is used for education, health and personal development. I seem to be fumbling with my words. Please read this. He says it far better than I ever could. I'll wait.





Kind of convicting, huh? Yeah, and we are in the midst of looking for a 4 bedroom house in a good school district. Maybe God is trying to change my heart. I think I need to listen.

Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth."