On Tuesdays we have "friend time." It goes like this: we say a prayer and talk about which friend is coming to our minds. Sometimes Andrew and I agree on one friend and sometimes we each do a different friend. Then, we decide what to do to LOVE THEM. We ask Jesus how we might be able to love them today. And then we do it. And we follow it through until it's finished. Here are a few that we've done:
- Baked our favorite neighbor some cinnamon muffins and hand-delivered them. Warm.
- Painted pictures with stickers for Uncle John and Matt, written them a note about why we love them and taken it straight to the post office.
- Gone to the store, bought a little outfit for our friend's new baby boy and taken it over.
- Painted pictures for our friend/neighbor girl and on each page we wrote a word that reminds us of her "Loving" "Fashionable" "Sweet" "Gentle" - stuff like that.
- Fulfilled a commitment to a friend that I'd long ago needed to follow through on.
- Baked cookies to say thank-you to someone who was good to us.
- Made up a Halloween treat bag for someone that mommy doesn't really like and talked about how Jesus says that we return good to someone even when they treat us poorly. And how that changes our heart toward them. And it has.
This has been really fun for us to do together. It's gotten us thinking of other people. It's been a way that I can teach my boys how to actively love someone.
I've noticed that there is often resistance inside me to this... lack of desire to follow-through, thoughts that come into my mind that I'm just trying to be a "do-gooder" and this doesn't mean anything and just general apathy sometimes. But these, of course, are lies. Lies I believe are meant to keep us from doing these tiny things to change our own hearts, practice love and plant seeds of it in the lives of others.
Tuesdays are cool.
