I dread election year. We are already experiencing the slings and arrows of misfortune…do we have to add the barbs and daggers of divisiveness? I don’t discuss politics on Facebook. I know what I believe. I respect that others believe differently. This is the foundation our country was based on. Brotherly love. We can disagree without being unkind. The rhetoric is already bad out there. The name calling, the personal attacks, the discrimination…I hate it. The advent of social media has allowed public discourse without the governor that face-to-face interaction provides. We no longer have to look the other person in the eye when we slam them, degrade them, mock them, deride them. It is unseemly and inhumane. It is uncivilized. It scares me because you can’t put smoke back in a bottle. There is only one way to create change and that is to BE the change.

A few years ago, my kids were really hurt and angry with me surrounding my divorce from Hubby #2. My oldest said something really snotty to me, in front of a bunch of people…including her young daughter. And here is how I handled it. I turned to my daughter and calmly said, “I have to own your treatment of me because I trained you how to do it. I spoke ill of my mother in front of you when you were growing up so how could you have learned the proper respect a parent deserves? But let me explain something to you. As we sit here and you speak to me this way in front of your young daughter, you are in turn training her how to treat you some day. You just think about that.”

Kindness costs nothing. Love is free. Practice Peace. And remember, children learn by what they see.

❤

“Turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.”

Psalm 34:14