There are days where I am certain I say the same thing at least 100 times…and other days that number far exceeds 500 times. Sometimes it’s “don’t wipe your mouth on your shirt while you’re eating”. Other times it is “please don’t lick the lizard, or the frog”. “Do you really need to kiss that snail goodnight?” Many times I have to say “make sure you wash your hands because you just touched (insert any gross object or insect here)”. And to be honest, these things are all said on a daily basis.
I lie in bed at night wondering if they have heard a word I am saying or if it goes in one ear and out the other. Sometimes it looks like they are looking right into my eyes, but they seem to be so oblivious to what I am saying. Other times, Jason and I are whispering…totally sure they aren’t paying attention and completely out of their normal hearing range and then all of a sudden they say, “oh yeah, we want ice cream too”. Really, because I just tried to ask you to do something and you didn’t hear me.
I often wonder if I just sound like a broken record or if they actually get what I am saying. And the more I wonder about the way my kids listen to me, the more I wonder if that is how God sometimes thinks about me. How many times has He tried telling me something before I finally got it?!
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like my kids don’t listen all the time. Actually, quite the opposite…they are usually really great kids, but they are kids and they totally act like it sometimes. They do, however, have their moments when they completely blow me away with how amazing they really are. I mean, they did move to the other side of the world with us and haven’t complained once…that says a lot!
The other day we had a moment of “wow, our kids are actually listening to what we are telling them”. And it was an amazing feeling!
Faith came home from school and told us she had gotten in trouble….ok so that’s not the moment we thought we did something right!!! Anyway, she told us she got in trouble for talking and laughing in the hallway with her friends. (If you know Faith, you know she loves to talk, and with her friends she loves to talk even more!!). So, another teacher had caught her and a few friends laughing and being too loud in the hallway so the teacher told their teacher.
Once they were back in their classroom, their teacher said she wanted to know who was a part of making the noise. Faith told us that at that moment something inside her told her that she knew she had to the right thing and tell the truth. And here is the part that amazed us….she did it and said she was the only one to admit it was her and she even had to go to the other teacher all by herself and apologize.
We are always telling our kids to always tell the truth…even if it means you will get in trouble. We tell them there will be times they will make the wrong choice, either by themselves, or with their friends, but that they always need to be truthful with us. We tell them that there will be times their friends want to do something that isn’t the right thing to do and they will need to make a choice about their own actions. And even though we are always telling them these things, we always wonder if they actually get it.
Thanks to Faith, we now know that they are getting it…little by little, they are starting to understand. We are learning that little by little, our kids are listening. Little by little, they are showing us that they finally get it after we have said it 100 times. And I am seeing that the effort of repeating myself with valuable words is so worth it.
Even though Faith did have to go and apologize by herself because she was a part of the noise, she learned a great lesson that day. And she saw that we weren’t mad at her for being loud…we’ve all been there before…we were so proud of her for doing what she knew was right. She took a great big step in following what God wanted her to do and for that I will continue making a valiant effort in repeating all the valuable things they need to hear.