Wear it Around Your Neck

Proverbs 3:3 "Never let loyalty and kindness leave you! Tie them around your neck as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart."

I think we like to believe that we “are” this scripture.  I do aspire to this but you know where I really mess it up? I totally miss the boat when it comes to the people closest to me. I say things to them in anger or frustration that I would never say to someone I work with or a stranger on the street. After the 5^th time I tell Padyn to feed the dogs and he hasn’t done it, the kindness is no longer around my neck or in my heart, it’s out the door.  I say hurtful things to him that don’t make him an ounce more willing to do his chores and make him unsure of my loyalty or kindness.

It wouldn’t be quite so bad if my lapses were balanced out by positive remarks and actions but try as I do I am still not the warm grandma I wish I was. Heritage is a hard thing to overcome and I come from a family that didn’t hug, didn’t compliment and the only time you heard something aimed specifically in your direction was because you messed something up. Silence was our only positive reinforcement. Turns out they guys my dad worked with all knew how proud my father was of his children. We never did. I know my mom loves me, as she’s gotten older she has made a conscious effort to say so and to become a hugger. We are pretty funny to watch, like a couple of porcupines trying to figure out how to embrace without jabbing each other.  It reminds me of going to church the first time at a “huggin” Baptist church after years of attending a very stately and prim Presbyterian church. “Space people, personal space” obviously it was a foreign concept. You know what, as uncomfortable as it was at first those hugs got me through some pretty rough times.

God has seen me turn my back on him, insist on doing things my way and watched me fall in the ditch but instead of yelling "what did I tell you", in frustration at my stubbornness, He just holds out his hand and picks me back up.

“Write them deep within your heart”….or in my memory defective way, repeat it in your head constantly…”I have loyalty and kindness tied around my neck, I have loyalty and kindness tied around my neck”. I can’t find my car keys but “I have loyalty and kindness tied around my neck”.