We are living in a culture of unkindness. While people are preaching and screaming and shouting to be nice and to be kind, in the same breath they personally attack and berate anyone who isn’t like them or doesn’t think like them. I love technology and I am undoubtedly addicted to social media, but it’s no secret it has been used as a tool to help spread the messages of divisiveness, hate, and fear to anyone who logs on-even if it’s just for a moment. I’ve been spending some time thinking about how the message of hate and unkindness continues to spread like wild fire in unceasing wave after wave that covers our society and infiltrates the minds of our children. This wave is a supernatural, spiritual attack by an unseen enemy that is being carried on the winds of offense and bitterness from even well meaning people. Just like the devil likes to do, the things that were created and given to us to enhance our life and our love with our Creator have been perverted until those lovely things have been morphed in to something else and adopted by the masses. It pains me to see that even in things that should be so simple, there are chains attached. Kindness comes at a cost and not many of us realize it or those of us who do are just unwilling to pay that cost.

I have seen my kids come home day after day and express their frustration and anger with just feeling defeated because of other peoples unkindness. Sometimes we say or do things without thinking about how it affects someone else, especially if you’re a kid. We don’t way out the heaviness of our words before we say them to other people. That’s just a part of life and while it hurts to see your kids feel so defeated you just know that it’s something they have to get used to dealing with and they have to learn to develop a thick skin. The last few months have been brutal in our house in regards to this and I’ve spent a lot of time praying how to handle it because the answers haven’t been so cut and dry. I wouldn’t classify anything we’ve experienced as down right bullying but there’s been a heaviness on our kids that has extended from other’s words, thoughts, feelings, and they way they express them. I understand the concept of our kids having to learn hard life lessons but as a parent it’s just too hard to sit back and see their reaction is brokenness and not resiliency. What do you do? I’ve been asking God to show me the root of the issue so that I know how to pray and I know how to help them understand and process their feelings better. One part of this journey has been the Holy Spirit showing us not to react based on our emotions. For a family that lives life with ALL of our emotions, that’s really hard. We love big and get mad big and do everything in between but only if it’s BIG. Having to learn these feelings and emotions are ok has been freeing but having to learn not to react and respond to life based on things that are fleeting has been so hard for all of us. It’s hard to balance out feeling these things but not acting on them and it’s a process to have your younger children having to figure that out. As this journey has progressed, I can see we are all maturing more but it’s also caused some hurt that has to heal. For me, it’s been hard to figure out when it’s my feelings causing me to react on something and when it’s the Holy Spirit showing me what He wants me to know.

The other night, I had a dream that was undoubtedly from Him. I was at an outdoor concert. It was me, except my body was me about 15-20 years ago (man, I miss her) but my mind was as it is now (if only I could go back and do it over again that way-looking like I used to but being in the mental state I am now!) I paid my way in, but when I received my wrist band I stuck it in my pocket. There was a set of tall, metal, skinny, rickety stairs with a cat walk you had to walk around to get to the actual concert venue. I climbed the stairs and had just started on the cat walk and had begun to take my wrist band out of my pocket. The wind caught it and it blew out of my hands and landed on the ground beneath me. There were two girls about my age (so late teens, early 20’s) walking underneath and one of them saw my wrist band. She picked it up and I yelled out, “Ma’am! That’s my wrist band! You just saw it blow away from me! Can you hold on to it and I’ll come right down and get it?” The girl ignored me at first but I called out louder and louder. Finally, she rolled her eyes, looked up at me, gave me one of those mean-girl smirks I was so used to seeing high school, and walked away while stuffing MY wrist band in her pocket. I was just so shocked. Why would anyone act that way? What had I done to her to cause her to react that way to me? WHY would she be so mean without even going out of her way to actually BE mean? As I always do when God gives me a dream for a specific reason, I woke up immediately and I asked Him, “Ok. What was that about?” Even after I was awake, I could feel the disappointment and hurt in my heart that someone would just be so rude and mean. God said to me, “That feeling you have on the inside of you is what your kids and millions of other kids around the world feel every single day just because of basic interactions they have with people.” Oy. He had answered my prayer of letting me know why my kids were reacting and acting out in the ways they have been by physically letting me feel that hurt and rejection like they feel. I’m also not naive enough to believe that none of my children have never caused someone else to feel that same way.

But, now I know how to pray over them in both their giving and receiving unkindness. I’ve learned to stop focusing so much on their ACTION and start focusing on their HEART. The actions is the overflow of the heart. The words they speak and the things they do are a result of what is on the inside of them so I need to deal with the inside. I guess I never really realized the separation between the two-but for me, I’ve realized this week that when I demand a certain action without as much concern as to what the reason behind the action is, I’m demanding something out of them based on my own pride. I don’t want things to “appear” a certain way to others so “you have to act a certain way”. When in reality, what God has shown me is to keep instilling in them kindness and joy and love which will in return produce that fruit in their actions. Something else important to note, when you begin to have these revelations and your family starts to change and your kids mature in their faith and concepts of the reality of their world a little bit, expect to get some opposition to this growth and expect to have other people be used to bring that opposition to you. There’s nothing the enemy hates more than when the Children of God Most High start to grow and let themselves be prepared for the next season of their life…but there’s nothing he likes more than to abuse the situation until he can cause so much hurt that he stalls any growth and momentum your kids might face. As a parent, I have wasted so much time battling people that hurt my kids that I have allowed the real enemy to escape undetected without nary a scratch. Perhaps the biggest lesson for me during the last few months has been to reshift my focus from people and put my attack back on to the enemy that is the root of the hurt. It’s time for families to stop reacting to life happening to them and let the enemy react to our authority and power through Jesus. More about that coming next time…….