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January 18th 2009
This last weekend Susan and I spent a few days up the mountain with our kids and grandchildren. It was fun sitting around the dinner table hearing the little ones talk about their adventures on the ski slopes. It’s not often that we have extended times like that to listen to the way our girls and their husbands interact with their children.
“You were awesome out there today honey!”
“I was so proud of you!”
“You recovered from that fall like a pro!”
We ate lots over the four days we were away, but the nourishment our grandkids got in their souls from the cheerful interaction and positive encouragement will last a life time.
There is great power in our words and in the way we use them.
A friend of mine has a son who was going through a rough season a while ago. If there was trouble to be found, his young teenaged son would surely find it. He told me about a call he received from his son’s teacher recently, “More trouble”, he thought, as the teacher asked him and his wife to come in for a meeting.
When the scheduled time arrived, the teacher looked at my friend and said, “Thank you so much for coming, I wanted you to hear what I have to say.”
The anxious dad crossed his arms and waited for the hammer to fall. He was already thinking of excuses he would give for his son’s misbehavior. But the teacher went onto give a list of ten things—ten positive affirmations of the thirteen year old boy; ten compliments of my friend’s “troublemaker” son.
When she finished the father asked, “And what else. Let’s hear what he did now.”
“That’s all I wanted to say,” she responded with a smile.
When the dad got home that evening, he repeated the conversation he’d had with the teacher, to his son. He told him the ten positive things his teacher had said; he then hugged the surprised boy and told him how proud he was of him.
Not surprisingly, almost overnight, the boy’s attitude and behaviour changed dramatically. His teacher’s positive affirmations had nourished his soul.
It was in a small country church when a young altar boy, serving his priest, dropped the cruet of wine. The village priest struck the boy on his cheek and cruelly shouted, “Leave the altar, and don’t come back!” That boy grew up to be Tito the atheistic Communist leader.
In a much more elegant city cathedral of a large city, another altar boy, serving the bishop at Sunday Mass, dropped the cruet of wine he was holding.
With a warm twinkle in his eyes the kindly bishop whispered, “Someday you will become a great priest!” That boy grew up to become Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
There is lasting power in our words!
- Barry Buzza
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