God Made Me Special

I wanted to share with you a story that I think is sweet.  I cry a little every time I tell it.  I love to tell this story, hey! That’s a song…

Lucas James Force, 4 yr old, can be a little testing to his parent’s patience.  This past weekend he lacked ability to maintain focus.  I don’t know whether it is because he is four or if perhaps he has slight ADD tendencies.  I’m not going to rush to diagnose the latter.  I hope this just works itself out in time.  His lack of focus and hyperactivity can be testing.  Over the weekend after several occurrences where Lucas lost focus on task, we devised a new arrangement where Lucas had three chances to do what he was told but on the fourth time he lost focus we were going to take one of his little cars and he had to give us one.  His infractions were small things, don’t throw things on the floor especially when we are all cleaning house, don’t run in the house, (our house doesn’t sound very fun, I promise we did fun stuff too) Oh here’s a more fun one, don’t ride your bike so far away that I can’t see you when you are crossing the street. See, we get out!

Anyway, at the end of the weekend, Lucas was really struggling to finish his dinner after he had been complaining that he was hungry for over an hour.  There were vegetables in there and he was sure he wouldn’t like it.  Kevin and I took turns urging him to just try a bite of zucchini or a bite of potato.  Finally he gave up completely.  He was so frustrated and defeated.  He said out loud, “I just can’t do it; I am just not a good boy”.  Addie let him have it then, “Lucas! Don’t say that. GOD made you special”.  I had never heard her be so emphatic.  It went on. Lucas, “Are you sure about me? Because I just can’t seem to do anything right.  What about when I jump on the bed and throw things on the floor?” to which Addie replied, “Yes, Lucas, even then.  God loves you just like you are.  You are special and I am special and Mommy is special and Daddy is special and Emaleigh is special too” And she had no idea how much of an impact she made on Lucas.  He finished up real quickly and got a bath and went to bed.  I was really proud.  Thank God for Ms. Bethany and Bible land.

<--That's Ms. Bethany right there.

The whole occurrence changed Kevin and me too.  We noticed that we had lectured our son right into believing he was bad.  So we eased up a lot, taking away all of the lecturing for a day anyway, but keeping the two cars rule.  He lost no cars yesterday.