When I left for a 5-day conference, I gave the boys each a toy cell phone that I could record my voice on. It touched my heart to see how much they liked hearing my simple “I love you; be good for Daddy; see you soon…” message.
The toy was too easy to erase though; the touch of a button and my voice was gone. When I got back from my trip, my 5 year old asked “Mom, can you put your voice back on my phone?” He’s the same son who later asked when I was going to my conference again.
Self-esteem. It has almost become a buzz word for our culture. We are to teach our children to have good self-esteem. Bad self-esteem is blamed for a myriad of problems ranging from bad behavior to serious psychological disorders.
While I agree that we are very special to God, created in His image, and loved unconditionally by Him, I also think we have sometimes “messed up” on our ideas of self-esteem. Too many times I find myself too focused on myself, whether it is to think positively or negatively about myself, I find myself too self-absorbed. I find the same pattern in my children.
The center stone of my wedding set has a ‘feather.’ That’s a rather romantic name for what amounts to a chunk of diamond missing where one facet should be. I don’t know if the feather was always there—the set belonged to my husband’s mother before me.
The jeweler called about it when we left it to be sized. He put the diamond under his loupe and made a diagram of all the imperfections that make this stone unique. Someone else may have a ring that looks like mine, but like snowflakes and fingerprints, no two diamonds are exactly alike. I know what distinguishes mine from others.