If you found a treasure chest, what would you like to see in it? Gold? Jewelry? Receipts of all your bills paid off? Precious pictures? Cash? It is kind of fun to think about that, isn’t it? I remember movies and cartoons about pirates and others searching for a treasure chest and the moment they found it, they would break the lock, open the top and there it was…”TREASURE”!
If our life was a treasure chest, what valuable treasure would we find in it? Would we find joy, freedom, confidence, peace, memorized scripture, or would we find an empty box or perhaps decaying joy, freedom, confidence, peace and full of negative words?
Every day, we are inputting words, images and experiences into our lives. Some of them are positive and some of them are negative. Many of us have a stash of negatives from rough childhood experiences and on top of those, we add more and more negatives because that is about all we know. Those few positive things can be absolutely buried under the tough stuff in our lives.
What would happen if we opened our treasure box and pull out those negatives thoughts, actions and memories and threw them away once and for all; leaving the good things in our lives to fill the spaces? Then we really WOULD have a treasure box, right?
I can’t talk about treasures without thinking of children. The Lord gives us these precious little beings to love, nurture and raise to be happy and healthy adults. Even with the tough stuff we go through with our kids, we still need to stay focused in raising them well, right? I remember when I was a young mother thinking that everything I did and said, good or bad, had an effect on our kids. They come into the world and my husband and I give them our perspective on the world until they are old enough to develop their own. They weren’t possessions, but they were treasures God entrusted to us.
Children of adoption are also treasured, but for some reason their original parents give them to someone else for any number of reasons. Many of these children grow up thinking that they were not worth love because their own mom gave them away, no matter how many times they are told they “were chosen.” Many adopted kids grow up to be successful and well-adjusted adults, but many feel inferior all of their life.
On Tuesday, we will have author Sherrie Eldridge on Chained No More Talk Radio and discussing “The Good, Bad, and the Ugly of Adoption.” She was adopted and struggled with some of these issues, so she wrote a book to encourage and educate adoptive parents on the joys and struggles of adoption. Tune in at 2pm ET to www.toginet.com.
Look at your kids and grandkids today and see them as treasures instead of hassles or obligation. How you treat them today will determine their success and confidence in their future. Open your treasure chest and fill it with words and actions of kindness, patience and joy!