It was a typical brother-sister conflict. It was loud, neither was stopping yelling back and forth as my husband and I called to them be done arguing. When I reached the room they were in, my mind quickly searched for what privilege they should lose or what consequence they would have.
"Get a piece of paper. Write 25 things that are worse in this world then what you two are arguing about. After you write 25, pick one from the list. Write the first paragraph on your thoughts about the topic you picked and write the second paragraph from facts you research on the topic." I am not sure that I expected anything even near the depth of the 25 things each of my children listed. I cried the next day as I read their lists, realizing no matter what is going on around us they see - they hear - they understand!
This is what one of my children wrote:
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Abandoned Children
Children being abandoned and orphaned is worse than what my brother and I were fighting about. These children are begging for families and I am fighting with mine. The children are mistreated, not cared for, lonely, abused, and some have lost hope. I will focus more on the children in need instead of fighting with my family.
There are an estimated 153,000 orphans in the world. One out of five orphans are severely underweight. 19,000 children under the age of five died everyday in 2011 alone. Many do not get to go to school, some are considered untouchable, they are unloved and unwanted by much of society and most never find families.
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I saw a woman's post this week. She was responding to another woman that mentioned she had been adopted. The woman commenting on the post said, "I was an unwanted child but unfortunately never got adopted. I spent my teenage years in group homes."
Her comment stuck me... she lives with that forever - feeling that she was unwanted! Then I look back at the last sentence of my daughter's writing... "Many do not get to go to school, some are considered untouchable, they are unloved and unwanted by much of society and most never find families." Remember, the second paragraph were facts she found somewhere. Those were things that are wrote as statistics or truths!! Seriously... We cannot get so caught up with things that we miss that. There are children that are not being loved, they believe they are unwanted. And what if we look at the part of that sentence that reads "some are considered untouchable" ... some really aren't touch at all, they are left in cribs or even tied to their cribs. Can we fathom that? The fact that a woman can look back and refer to herself as an unwanted child... I don't ever want to read that and simply move to the next sentence.
There are three children waiting to come home that have spent their lives as what those statistics would have called "unwanted children". That opportunity to love them through that hurt and show them they are wanted will not be lost on us.
I love my children, I love their hearts ... I decided to write my own list of 25 things that are worse in the world than anything I am facing, and when I am in the midst of a struggle, I have been reminding myself to pull my list out and pick one of those things to focus on in that moment.
It has been so helpful to really stop and search my heart on these things in the moments when I get caught up on something. So it wasn't originally my fight when my son and daughter were bickering. Though it easily could be. How often are we fighting being busy, or disappointed, annoyed or feeling misunderstood? I really needed this lesson too!
Thanking God for all that He teaches me through my children.
"There is no situation so chaotic that God
cannot, from that situation, create
something that is surpassingly good.
He did it at the creation.
He did it at the cross.
He is doing it today."
- Bishop Moule
