Skip to main content

Be appreciative. Be generous. Be encouraging.

Be appreciative

It had been one of those days where I felt I was dashing around a lot for very little reward.  Tidying, vacuuming, chivvying the kids around - and now I was in the kitchen starting on dinner while the rest of the family was watching TV.  I'd just finished pummeling the pizza dough into submission when Theo wandered into the kitchen.  He looked at the beige blob in the mixing bowl and exclaimed, "Wow, that's amazing Mum!  You made that!"  A smile broke over my face, and I realised: Yes.  I did make that.  And actually, it is pretty amazing.

What is just as amazing is how a tiny pinch of unadulterated appreciation changes how we feel.  Like the yeast in the bread dough, a few kind words turn a sticky lump of a day into something growing larger and lighter.  So I resolved to try and give that gift to myself and to others more often this year.  To stop and look and say, "That's amazing!  You did that!"  To be appreciative.

Be generous


We are in a slightly odd position at the moment.  We have money.  We just don't have much income.  Obviously, if we keep not having income, we will, in the end, not have money.  This is something we're doing everything we can to prevent, which includes trying not to spend too much of the money we do have, so as to have longer before we don't have it any more.

Unfortunately, this tends to result in both of us viewing the other's purchases with suspicion.  Did you really have to buy that?  Are you sure you couldn't have saved money on that?  And we both end up feeling slightly guilty, a little bit defensive, and somewhat resentful.  That's not a particularly good way to feel.  I realised, even though we're budgeting, we still need a generous mindset.  We don't want to cling on to every last penny as though it will save us.  We don't want to be constantly adding up how much you spent and I didn't spend.  So here's another gift to give this year.  To say, "I'm glad this money could buy something you need."  To be generous.

Be encouraging


"Well done, you put your own shoes on!"  "Look at that drawing you did - so colourful!"  "That's great, you got up all by yourself!"  In early life every little thing is a new achievement, and we do our best to surround our children with a blizzard of encouragement. 

As we get older the expectations kick in.  Too often we find ourselves saying, "Why didn't you do that?"  "Weren't you thinking?"  "You never remember!"  Encouragement changes to discouragement, and instead of looking for the good, we see only the ways in which people let us down.  When I realise what tiny things I praise my two-year-old for (and when he praises me back!), I start thinking that maybe some of the other people in my life could use some more positive feedback.  Toby might look at me funny if I tell him how great it is that he put his own trousers on, but he notices when I compliment him for being polite at the dinner table. 

We all like to have our efforts noticed and our failures overlooked.  And that's one more gift to give.  To say, "Well done, I saw what you did."  To be encouraging.

What gifts will you give this year?
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Growing things

For those of you who are interested in my attempts at balcony gardening, I thought I'd update you a little. For those who aren't, don't skip this post. You may find something else of interest. Apart from the ever-present herbs, tomatoes and cayenne peppers are on the go this year. The peppers are really on the go - we went away for a week and came back to find them twice the size as when we left. Now they're producing fruit which is growing at a similarly rapid rate, though none has ripened to red yet. I realised I should have given you some kind of scale, so I just went out and measured. They're about 22 cm long, or 8 1/2 inches for you non-metric types. I may have to find out how to dry peppers if they all ripen at once. A couple of tomato plants are looking pretty healthy and beginning to flower. A few died; one, apparently, by being eaten whole by a bird, a trouble I've never had before. I had two seedlings left so used those as replacements, b...
2 comments
Read more

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Normal Christian Life: Spiritual Formation Book 1

"I have never met a soul who has set out to satisfy the Lord and has not been satisfied himself.  It is impossible."   The Normal Christian Life by Watchman Nee is the first of my four books for spiritual formation that I'm reading this year.  Watchman Nee was a Chinese Christian who was converted in 1920 and was able to spend many years in preaching and evangelism.  However, after the Communist revolution he was imprisoned, and died in jail 20 years later.  The Normal Christian Life is based on talks he gave in Europe in the 1930's. What are the main themes of this book? Nee starts by saying that it's possible that the normal Christian life has never been lived by anyone except Jesus - which is hardly an encouraging beginning!  He then goes on to outline his view of such a life, using the book of Romans as a guide.   He certainly sets a high bar: for Nee, the normal Christian life is based on a knowledge and experience of death to our old self...
Post a Comment
Read more