I was searching my bible app for a verse. I feel like it is a real verse from the bible but I couldn’t find it. Maybe it is just Truth from the Holy Spirit or some interpretation I have owned of a different passage. I looked in my bible for something that sounded like this: What the devil intended for evil the Lord can use for good. If anyone has an accurate verse that cites this, please share with me! If not….I’ll move on. I did find this one in Proverbs and it also works, in a round about way.
Proverbs 11:1-The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him.
In my mind, this means play fair. What works for one can and should work for everyone. Here is an example. I am reading a book called The Boy Who Was Raised As A Dog by Bruce D., Perry and Maia Szalavitz. I am reading it because I missed an opportunity to hear this man speak and a social worker friend said that this book was a good synopsis of his talk. I ordered it from Amazon…..and if anyone wants to borrow it let me know. It goes through case studies that this psychiatrist experienced with children in his practice and he began to learn the effect that trauma had on children’s behaviors…..and in detail, shares some of the horror that children live through before they can get help. It is aweful. To read about abuse, neglect, misunderstanding…..misdiagnoses…..and triggers and body memories and irrational responses to typical things like a door bell that rings, or a gallon of milk…….and I ache. I ache for the children who are living through these nightmares every single day. I ache for the Lord who is with them in their horror and hoping and planning and asking good people to step in and help. The Lord detests dishonest scales, but accurate weights find favor with him. He can detest the work of the devil in the attempt to destroy the lives and hearts and souls of children…..and he can raise up warriors. Moms and dads and social workers and nurses and lawyers and law makers……teachers……business people…..day care providers……therapists and the list goes on and on….to help make accurate weights.
In the book, a child who had been horrifically abused had a trigger from doorbells that sent her cowering in fear. The many foster homes she was placed with were not allowed to know her history because of ongoing legal proceedings, but they reported that this trigger sent the child into complete shut down fear mode. This doctor read the history, understood association between the doorbell and the abuse…..and was able to begin to help the child heal. Now, if you are like me, this makes you feel hopeful yet overwhelmed…..and maybe your home life involves this extreme level of trauma based parenting, and maybe, not. Mine does not. We have mild stuff….but nothing like this. Either way….I have a really good idea.
Lets create accurate weights for our scales….because we can. Maybe we cannot undo the aweful stuff but we are able to create some good stuff. Yesterday I bought a frozen turkey on sale. I decided to just thaw it out and cook it……because it is cold outside this weekend in Iowa, and because I can. I can cook the turkey and we will eat it for Sunday dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and green beans (yes, in May, not for Thanksgiving) and I will use some of the meat for soup and some of it for a hot dish….because that’s what Dutch moms do. As I was thinking through Sunday dinner, I decided that if I am going to make a Thanksgiving meal…..I can also lead my family into a spring Thanksgiving meditation…..oh…..and make a pumpkin pie. Because (you guessed it) I can.
I hope and pray that my children will grow up with a trigger that when they see a roasted turkey come out of the oven, and watch me whip up mashed potatoes and serve up beans and gravy…..that they will expect some words on being thankful…..and that they will hope for the delight of a pumpkin pie. Now that, my friends, is how we create some accurate weights. Maybe cooking isn’t your thing. That’s fine. Make it a tradition to do something else….always get ice cream after a baseball game. Try to bring red licorice on a car trip. You get the point…..create new triggers for your people that speak love and life and health and strength and safety and goodness and the weight of Jesus love through parents to children.
Then teach your people to do the same for their people….and so on and so on…..and maybe we can tip the scales so far in our favor that the opposition no longer has weight to throw around. Wouldn’t that be nice.
