the kindness campaign...

I know I have been M.I.A. recently.  I have been spending time loving my family.

Recently, I felt God giving me a new perspective on loving and showing kindness to my family.  Ephesians 4:32 says:

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

Kindness refers to a goodness towards others that spreads through a person and mellows all the harsh aspects.  There are many times when my words, my tone of voice and my actions don't show kindness.  I can be a very ugly and selfish person.  Now, I tell my family that I love them every day, often many times.  But am I truly showing them that I love them with my actions?  I was doing a devotional with the kids one morning and we read 1 John 3:18:

Little children, let us not love in word or in talk but in deed and in truth.

I don't know why I am always surprised when God uses the times that I share His Word with my kids to change my own heart.  How often do I say with my mouth that I love my family but don't show them in my actions?  Do I spend time with them, listen to them, play with them, hug them and kiss them?  Do I love them in truth, the way that that God loves me?  Claiming to love someone is not enough because love is not sentiment, but deeds.  Sacrificing yourself for the good of someone else.  

So I decided that in the month of March I would start my kindness campaign.  

source

I will look at my heart and see what ways I can change to show kindness and love to my family.  

 I started with Chris.  He is the husband that God blessed me with so who would be a better person for me to demonstrate my love and kindness!  I decided to show Chris in my actions that I love him.  There are so many times when we take other people for granted and just assume that they know we love them but we never show it.  So I started greeting him when he came home from work.  He works hard every day and I wanted him to know that I was happy to see him.  It isn't a sacrifice for me to give him a hug and a kiss when he comes home and ask him how his day has been.  

I want to be the helper to Chris that God created me to be.  I am looking for ways to make things easier for him.  I am putting down my phone so that I can truly listen to him when he is talking instead of being distracted by incoming texts and emails.  I mean really, who would feel loved when they have to play second fiddle to a smart phone?!

This next week I am going to extend the kindness campaign to my kids.  Anyone who has kids knows that sometimes it is hard to show love to them.  They are our children and we will always love them but I think that is why God tells us we are to love even the people who aren't always nice to us.  

Please pray for me as I try to live out the kind of love that Paul talks about in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.  Love that is patient, kind, love that doesn't envy or boast, love that is not arrogant or rude or insist on its own way.  Love that is not irritable or resentful and that doesn't rejoice in wrongdoing but rejoices in the truth.  Love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things and endures all things.  A love that never ends.