It was a Monday. Library day. I usually give the kids a book limit when we go, to avoid coming home with one hundred books. Okay, let me be honest (since this blog is supposed to be about honesty in the first place😜), it's actually to avoid the twenty dollar fine when I forget to return their books on time. Ha! Anyway, that day I gave them a 4 book limit. The kids did their usual search and eventually one of them came asking for a one book increase. When you have multiple children you have to be "fair". Equality takes on a whole new meaning in a large family. When I meal prep, all plates are created equal. When I get juice cups ready in the morning, all juice cups are filled to the exact mark on the exact same cups with the exact same precision. When I buy one a candy they happen to eye at the grocery check out, the other is given a chance to buy their favorite candy too. Just to keep things equal.
All that being said, the library book limit was readily increased to five books for all. You know, just to keep things "equal".
Somehow, when I checked out the amount the librarian quoted seemed to be quite larger than I'd anticipated. I knew we had some books at home missing from the count yet that had to be renewed again. That threw the count off. But, I was still left wondering how our count was so high.
When we got home I tried to, yet again, equally divvy out the books so that each child had to keep track of exact amounts. When I asked the kids to count their books so that I could hand out a few extra to each child to keep track of, one child in particular was looking at me strangely when I asked how many books they had.
At first I did not think much of it. But as I continued to question my little one about how many books they had, the evasiveness and questions I got in return caused me to begin wondering what was going on. Eventually I realized there was deception going on. Initially, my heart sank. I thought to myself, why... Why even after I increased the amount did they feel they had to hide more from me? Why did they not just ask me for another extra? Why hide it?
I thought about the small-ness of this infraction. The fact that I could have just brushed it off completely. (Thus giving my mommy hat a toss to the shelf for one of the day's teachable moments and therefore giving me five extra minutes to simply sit and "just be" after the library excursion). The fact that I could have scolded this child but then left things as they were.
But, I realized in that moment it was a teachable moment. They chose to lie. They chose to deceive and be sneaky. This was a small and seemingly insignificant blip... But it is in those moments that we can make a big impact on our children's future choices if we choose to spend the time and invest in teaching and instilling wisdom into their hearts.
So, I sent them on to a quiet time of reflection on their choice, while I prayed.
I asked for God to help me know how to best handle the situation. I asked for His wisdom to help them learn a valuable life lesson from this decision. And I asked for Him to speak into this young heart.
Then I called my little one back out to the living room. We discussed the decision they'd made, how it made me feel having been deceived and disobeyed. We discussed how it made them feel. We discussed how the situation could have been handled differently. And ultimately, we discussed how these small choices to lie, to hide things and to deceive can play into bigger decision making in the future. We talked about how library books are small things, but big decisions we have to make as adults can have much bigger ramifications and we discussed how a lie, deception or a hidden truth can often grow that difficulty and pain NOT lessen it. It's always best to go about things in an honest and forthright way. Teaching this valuable life lesson now is going to be so much better now than when it involves boyfriends or girlfriends or spouses or jobs or money or financial issues later on in life.
Satan is called many times throughout scripture as the father of lies. I want my children to know that a lie is never what God wants and what pleases Him. It is always something the enemy is behind and trying to pull us into the tangled webs it can create. Truth is always Gods way, even when the truth is so difficult to speak or to live out, it is always the right thing. I want my kids to have the strength and wisdom to know that being honest will always be worth the surrender and humility it may take. Being honest can lead to restoration, healing and hope. Dishonesty and lies only lead to destruction, pain, mistrust and broadening difficulty. I want our children to know we will be parents who will always forgive and accept them in their honesty... That their lies or deception or sin may bring with it natural and sometimes given consequences for their actions or words, but that the payoff is the guilt-free conscience and knowing they are walking in truth. Truth brings freedom.
My prayer for my friends and family is that we walk in this knowledge and make the difficult decisions we need to make to walk in the freedom of truth no matter how difficult the path to that may be.
❤️🙏🏼
