Blessings in the Midst of Struggles

A grandmother was talking to me about her granddaughter whom we shall call Sophia. Sophia  who is now 16 grew up quite privileged. Her father was very well-off and happily spoiled his daughter.  Sophia has an older half-sister named Maria. Maria and Sophia have the same mom but have different dads. Maria vividly recounted Christmas in their household when Sophia was much younger. Sophia would be showered with dozens of expensive gifts, she would sit on the floor opening one present looking at it for 10 seconds then literally throwing the present to the side to move on to opening the next present.  Maria said that there was no gratitude in Sophia’s heart because it was nothing special to her anymore….she could get those toys or books or clothes any time she wanted anyway.  At least that was the truth until around 4 years ago.   Sophia’s life took a dramatic turn. 

Her father went bankrupt and their finances plunged and unfortunately Sophia struggled to adjust. Her grandmother said that they had viand that was meant to be shared but that Sophia decided she didn’t want to eat rice and just ate all the viand herself leaving none for her companion.

It was a minor thing. It however spoke volumes about her mindset and point-of-view. I do not blame Sophia at all. How can we expect her to know how to share when she hasn’t  ever been asked to all her life. Money was no object in the past and so she never had to consider someone else when eating.   Sophia grew up sheltered and now ever having to think about the cost of food or consider how consuming something at home could impact another person’s meal.

I couldn’t help but compare the same situation with my daughter Andrea.  You see, my daughter was around 4 when we experienced our lowest point financially.  Andrea was blissfully unaware that we were struggling but she knew about limited resources because we explained it to her. For example, there would be times when the 4 of us (my husband, my daughter, our helper and myself) would share 1 can of SPAM for dinner. The SPAM would be split into 12 slices and each of us would have 3 slices each. I distinctly remember one time when Andrea asked if she could have more. I explained to her that she could get one but that would mean another person would have less.  She decided not to take one. From that point on, every single time we would eat SPAM (please don’t judge, we don’t eat it often but it is a guilty treat we do enjoy every once in a while) my daughter took it upon herself to dutifully divide the SPAM in order to make sure everyone had enough.

Fast forward 5 years later. We were doing a bit better financially (we could actually afford to open more than one can of SPAM for a meal hahaha) but the lesson of those difficult times still remains in our hearts and our daughter’s hearts. I remember just last month when we were eating chicken.  There were 3 people eating and 6 pieces of chicken, my daughter has eaten her two pieces and I wasn’t going to eat mine so I asked her if she would want to eat another piece. She looked at me and said “But mom then you won’t have enough” and I told her I am fine because I preferred to eat more of the veggies than the chicken. She thanked me profusely and got her next piece.

I shared this story to my husband with tears welling up to my eyes. When we were struggling 5 years ago,  our mindset was just survival and relying on Jesus we never thought of life lessons. Now in hindsight those times brought us so many blessings in terms of character development and life lessons.  One blessing is the lesson we were able to impart to our daughter of caring for others and not only considering herself. I know for a fact that despite my good intentions and my training in parenting I would never have thought of teaching this lesson to my daughter. I had to teach her that lesson because we were in the midst of lack. Had we been experiencing abundance then, I wouldn’t have needed to teach her! 

So I ask parents to find blessings in your struggles. Use your struggles as an opportunity to teach your kids life lessons particularly about resilience and faith and empathy. 

(P.S. I just want to make sure to point out to make sure that we share the lessons to our kids without burdening them with our problems. There is a difference.)

A Hundred Million Miracles - The Miracle Mindset Part 2

In my previous post, I talked about the abundance of miracles around us. I also talked about how we fail to perceive these miracles when we focus just on the mundane. Today I want to share how I try to instill a miracle mindset in my child.

1. I am intentional in pointing out miracles. 

 When I am at home, I am a walking exclamation point. My language is filled with phrases like “Wow!”, “incredible!”, “Isn’t that amazing?”, “Can you believe that?” and “What are the chances?”. When my child was younger I had to spell things out for her in order for her to see the awesomeness in things. Now, she has internalized this attitude and would often be the one to point out amazing things. One time we were out of the house and she was so thirsty. There was no vendor in sight but I brought an extra water bottle for her so she was able to drink right away and she turned to me and said “Wow mom isn’t it lucky we have water? We didn’t even have to spend money!”

 2. Teaching a point-of-view of abundance vs Want. 

Want, want, want. We live in a culture that celebrates materialism and wanting something newer, better or bigger. The first thing I had to do was unlearn my own mentality of want and boy was that hard. We routinely purge our home for things but I have learned that more than the actual purchasing of things we also have to watch what we say. Do you repeatedly say “I want to buy____” or “I want another_____”. Do you always take your child window shopping? What could that be teaching your child?

How about appreciating what we already have? Instead of talking about wanting to buy a bigger tv

why not talk about how blessed your family is to be able to have a tv set to enjoy together as a family? One time, while playing a board game with my daughter, we discussed how lucky we were to have that board game that has brought us so much happiness. Did my daughter really understand it at that time? To be honest I am not sure. Maybe she did, maybe she didn't -- but doing that is a start towards the direction of making that mindset more automatic for both of us.

 3. Counting the miracles we have. 

 A lot of people practice keeping gratitude journals and this would be a great place to count miracles. My daughter and I personally do this during prayer. 2 nights ago, Andrea’s grandfather invited her to Kidzania (a place she loved so much) part of our prayer was “We are amazed once again by how many people you put around us that love us and bless us Dear Lord. Thank you for Wowo and thank you for impressing in him the desire to bless Andrea with a trip to Kidzania.”

4. Restedness in God’s Wisdom and Provision as our Father. 

One thing that’s sometimes hard for kids to understand is how a good father like God would ignore the fervent desires of His people. I told Andrea that God only gives us what’s best for us, and sometimes the things we think would make us happy are not really the best for us.

My daughter particularly loves it when I talk about how I initially wanted to have a son and not a daughter. However, God didn’t bless me with a son and instead I had her. I talk about how lucky I am that God didn’t give me what I thought I wanted and how much happier I am now with what God gave me. We then talk about how sometimes God loves us so much that he can’t give us the things we think we want because they won’t really make us happy.

 5. Shifting away from the selfishness towards others. 

 Lastly, we try to shift her focus away from herself and her wants to the wants of others. This is still a work in progress but there are things we do like routinely giving away her toys and her books. Or when we go to parties and receive a lot of prizes we split them and share them with other kids. One of my happiest (and proudest) moment was during the birthday of one of Andrea’s friends. We bought a present that I knew Andrea would also enjoy *. On the way to the party Andrea exclaimed “I’m so happy for _______. He’s going to love this toy so much.” Isn’t that a great attitude?

 (*NOTE: whenever we buy presents for other kids it’s so tempting to buy Andrea a toy as well but we realize we are robbing her the joy of giving to others. When she was younger she would look enviously at the toys she is giving away but that has since changed)

All in all, these steps are great in helping our kids develop a miracle mindset but ultimately the best way to teach our kids is for us to model that mindset ourselves!