Everyday Goodness

As we wrap up goodness, I reflected on the following thoughts with my boys:

Sometimes goodness looks like doing out of the ordinary events like filling buckets for the people of the Ukraine! But most of the time, goodness looks like saying yes to those ‘small’ everyday good choices… like sharing the last cookie, letting your little brother pick the game you play, or choosing to include someone who otherwise would have been left out. Perhaps the choices we make to show everyday goodness prepares our hearts for a day when we are given the opportunity to do those extraordinary acts of goodness!

It has been a GOOD month! I wanted to share an update on the buckets and one last activity to try on a rainy day with your kids.

The ladies at Healing Hands International were so generous with their time after the boys dropped off the buckets that many of you helped fill. Chip, Banks and Justice were ecstatic to ask a question that has been keeping them up for many nights now…”HOW will you actually get the buckets TO the people in the Ukraine?”

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The boys marched through the warehouse and saw the thousands and thousands of buckets that they learned would soon be loaded onto a truck and driven to Savannah, Georgia before being transferred onto a boat bound for Poland. From there, the people of the Ukraine would receive them with grateful hearts. When we got home, the boys ran to find our globe and traced with their finger, the route that the buckets would take from Nashville all the way to the Ukraine!

Let Your Light Shine

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We tried to think of an easy way to remind the boys of their memory verse, so we made bracelets out of thin leather cording. They put a yellow bead in the middle and darker ones around it to represent shining their light “so that others would see their good deeds and glorify God.” Chip chose to make a yellow and blue bracelet to remind him to pray for people in the Ukraine. Even the littlest Walker brothers got in on this.

Disclaimer: This could be a choking hazard for young children! We took the bracelets off before bedtime, but making rainbow loom bracelets may be a better option with no beads involved!

Goodness Tree

Our Goodness Tree is officially finished and it has been the most popular activity in our house this month. Not only has it helped me to SEE the good in the boys and call it out, but it has also positively reinforced the boys good choices.

Be the Good, See the Good

Before Hulk (and his hand cuffs) went to play at the neighbor’s house he stopped and said, “Be the Good, See the Good” as if to tell me that being THE good was on his mind, and he didn’t need me to say a word before he left! I had him stop and repeat it, because it was a powerful reminder that sometimes simple is better!

And maybe this is also the take away lesson from our month of Goodness! We have done elaborate activities in the past but it seems seeing the tears of joy spread at the grocery store from the simple act of sharing a smile and hello with random strangers has made more of an impact on my soul than anything else.

Maybe it’s true, maybe “Goodness is less about behavior and more about cultivating a desire to do what is right.” Perhaps the most inspiring thing for me this month has been watching the boys’ desire for goodness grow!