Motherhood: What Matters Most?

What matters most to me when it comes to raising Munch? That’s simple. I want Munch to be a man of good character. I think about it constantly as he is 9 and I just hope that I’m doing right by him.  I want him to be a man of good character.

It’s hard today to really think about things that we take for granted. Be of good character or as my momma used to say to me “Don’t embarrass me”. I think that’s one of the fundamental lessons we have to teach our children. That your character matters because you matter.

We should never take for granted the things that we are called to do and we should always look at serving others as one our greatest priorities. No matter what. We can’t get too busy going through life that we are unable to see that there are others that are less fortunate than we are. Those that are struggling just to make ends meet. We must help.

Volunteering our time and sharing our talents are very important things to me. I also believe in charitable contributions. However, since Munch is an only child, I tend to do a lot of volunteering with him because I really want him to see the importance of serving others. I want him to see the benefits of service. But, sometimes he gets frustrated and doesn’t want to do it.

I get it. He’s 9. He doesn’t understand the importance of doing for others. Yet. He sees what he wants when he wants. Last year in December we participated in Wreaths Across America and even though I didn’t tell him about it until we got there he actually enjoyed it. I thought he would be scared, but he loved putting the wreaths on the soldier’s graves and he wished every headstone a Merry Christmas as he placed the wreath.

But, he’s fickle with his service as I experienced last month. I was assembling toiletries that my sorority sisters and I had collected for the homeless. We received an outpouring of support from people all over the community, including one local blogger Egypt who saw my flyer on Instagram and wanted to help. Well, all those toiletries had to be counted and sorted and assembled with like items to donate to the facility.

I asked Munch to help me with the sorting and he pitched a fit. He wanted to go back to playing in his room so he stomped, gave attitude and huffed and puffed while sorting. Feeling my patience running thin, I told him to forget it and I would do it on my own. He started to walk away. I then said “Munch, I teach you all the time that we are called to serve. Jesus came to serve at God’s request and are we to believe that we are too good to serve?” He looked at me. I then told him “I’m disappointed that you don’t want to help. I don’t want you to be selfish, but I want you to see the value in helping the homeless. These men and women don’t have a place to lay their head at night. No home means that they can’t go open the refrigerator and get food out. They need these supplies. We are helping them. I need you to understand how helping me helps them.”

He walked away and I continued to sort through the items on my own. Ten minutes later he comes down stairs with a tear streaked face asking to help. I smiled and said okay. He handed me a picture. I started to cry too.

He got it. He got the point of what I was saying. That fact made me smile. Even though we weren’t helping people with blood cancers as he stated in his drawing, it comforted me to know that my little boy was choosing to be of good character and the lesson that I was trying to teach was not going on deaf ears.

Want to keep in touch? You can find me on social media at the following links: Twitter @mskeeinmd, Facebook page A Thomas Point of View and my Instagram page https://www.instagram.com/mskeeinmd/.