I meant to share about this prior to Thanksgiving but life happens. A couple of weeks ago I sat on a panel for a local Mom's Group: Thrive Motherhood. The panel was called: Little Fire's Everywhere: Motherhood and Race. One of the questions that the founder, Allison Creagh asked was: How do you raise your children to appreciate other races and be kind to all people of all races? Kindness seems to be such an overused word these days because those who don't want to be "called out" use it as a blanket to cover up their ugliness. When I say kind, I mean the act of no expectation, compassion, mercy and if you are a believer it's loving your neighbor as yourself with the best example being our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
There is a book called Nice by local author Sharon Miller and she explains the difference between Nice and Kind and she says: We live in a culture that prizes niceness as one of the highest virtues. Niceness keeps the peace, wins friends, gains influence, and serves our reputation well, but it also takes the teeth out of our witness and the power out of our faith. When we choose to be nice instead of faithful (kind), we bear fruits that are bland, bitter, empty, and rotten to the core
This blog post isn't to discourage your everyday flow but rather encourage you to think beyond yourself and your friend group. So, I ask the question what does your dinner table look like? Are the people that you are inviting into your home, to your private parties, your bible study, or to a coffee meeting different from you? Are their walks, struggles, doubts, pay grade, and skin tone different from yours, I repeat is their skin tone different from yours?
We oftentimes want to be comfortable because in our comfort we aren't challenged and we all know when we aren't challenged we don't grow. The problem is that when you run from discomfort all the time, you are restricted to a small zone of comfort, and so you miss out on most of life. You miss out on the richness of other cultures, the richness of other things, and the richness of people who don't look like you.
I recently well seem like every day I see someone with a shirt that says "raising kind humans" and I can't help but wonder what that shirt actually means. Is she raising her kids to see in all people, is she raising her kids to speak up and out about racial injustices, is she raising her kids to be confident and stand by the truth. I can't help but wonder.
As I am writing I am speaking to myself and it is my hope that you will find something in this post for you. We can't grow if everyone around us is the same as us. So I ask these question(s) again:
Who's at your dinner table?
Who are your kids playing with?
Who's in your friend circle?
I digress,
Kiara
TBMx
Photos by: Anna Rudd Photography