This world has grown completely insane. A person tries to spread a little love around only to get slapped in the face. A while ago, my oldest daughter tried to be nice to a younger girl who was in line to buy some candy at The Dollar Store. The girl didn’t have enough for her purchase, so my girl gave her a dollar. The other girl was just about to take it when her mom stepped in and scolded her daughter for taking it. My daughter gave me a puzzled look and the girl’s mom gave us both dirty looks as if to say,” We aren’t charity cases, so keep your money ‘cuz we don’t need it.”
Then there was a time when I was at the grocery store and the young woman in front of me was short of money for her groceries; I had a few single bills and I offered them to her and with her snooty nose stuck way up high in the air she said in a chilly tone of voice,” No thanks but I got it.” Yeah right! She had to put some of her items back.
The whole world is upside down crazy. I was kind to a kid, one of my kid’s friends. Her mother went ballistic on me and she had her kid cut off all ties with my family. WTH? Love offends now probably just as worse or maybe worse than in the days when Yeshua walked with us. He told His followers that others would know they are His followers because of their LOVE. It seems like in these days people would rather that you cuss ’em out than you lift a hand to bless them.
Are these the days that try men’s souls? It seems so to me. What do you think?
I hate labels. There, that says it all. I have but only one name I answer to and that is the name my daddy gave me at birth. To show how much I despise labels when I first met my husband he and I were arguing while on our way home. We were at a red light and he crossed the line by calling me a female dog; I went berserk for a minute and I just raised my foot and put it right through the windshield of his car. He never labeled me like that again!
From the time I lost my parents I was labeled an orphan, and might I add that happened to me at a very young age. Then later on the other labels came and it made me boil inside because all I wanted to do was be myself; and that’s hard to achieve when you are being constantly categorized, stereo typed and labeled. The only things that have to have labels are food products, medicines and anything else that is not a breathing, walking living soul with a heart.
I once went to a counselor to try to figure out somethings in my past. After I told her what I’d been through she never labeled me; she did me a huge favor and reminded me I was anything but a victim because I had over come so much with God‘s help. THAT was great news to hear and it set me free. This same counselor though, did my husband a disservice. After several sessions with him she labeled him co-dependant. Why was that a disservice to him? Because he began to cling to that label and it made him remain the same. I have observed for several years now how labeling someone serves to cripple them and they stay bound by the words spoken over them.
Life and death are in the tongue. Our words can break the shackles that bind us or they can serve to further imprison us. Label a child stupid and he will believe that he is stupid all of his life. Tell a child that she is brilliant and she will aspire to much. People are not jars of pickles so top labeling them!
2 years ago we met with a family counselor because we all had issues. After our first session Bruce, the counselor told my husband and I that our children are a cut above the rest of any kids he had ever met. Last night we hear something entirely different. We spoke with a well meaning person who after a couple of hours of listening to our family air out some very strong feelings in a counseling setting, said that my kids are victims. WTH? Things didn’t change so much in our home from the last time we saw a family counselor to now. Be careful what you let some well meaning counselor speak over yourself or your children.
After this encounter, my kids came up to me right away and told me, ” Mom, how can that man call us victims when our last family counselor told us we are a cut above the rest? Mom, sure we’ve been hurt by stuff but that’s life! And, mom, victims are people who get hurt but they never get up, they stay there, wounded.” My 15 year old daughter put it so eloquently, ” I just reign from my place of pain.” My kids let me know they didn’t appreciate what was spoken over them, they didn’t receive one bit of it. So my husband and I prayed over them and broke the power of those words.
God, I pray that you help all of us stop labeling one another. Give us eyes to see people they way you see us. You are such an awesome God because you never label us, you just call us your children. Help us do likewise.
CAUTION! Before you decide to home school you should know that not everyone is going to jump on your band wagon and support you. When both sides of our family learned of our decision to home teach we received mixed feed back from different people in our extended families. My sister thought I was just plain stupid to have gone to college and gotten my Bachelors only to sit at home with my 4 kids and in her words,” waste my talents.” My brother in law admonished her by saying,” Are you kidding? How can she be wasting anything when your sister is pouring out the best of herself into her children?” Thank you for that Larry! Has it been tough on us with one of us bringing in one pay check? Well, at times it has been but in the end our needs have always been met. We also have learned that you really don’t need as much stuff to have a happy, comfortable life. We may not have the latest gadgets or go on vacations every summer but we do have each other and that is really what kids want: A stable happy home life where they know they are loved by both of their parents.
Eva Santiago 