"Love" Notes

Valentine's Day is just around the corner....so why not resolve something with a little love?


For instance, let's use the "bathroom situation" to illustrate my point.

It was messy.  Not just messy-- but MESSY!  I had gotten after my darlings a few times to get it cleaned up, and it was only slightly given some attention.  After about a week or two of this occurence, it had really gotten messy.

To their credit, they were really busy with all of their activities and school work, which always presents a challenge in our household.  But still- I mean in 10 minutes it could have been cleaned up.

Frankly, I couldn't stand it any more!  So I went to work scrubbing things down.  With each scrub, I kept thinking about the justice that would need to prevail and all the jobs they would need to do to pay me back for this.

Then I had a fun idea.... why not extend a little mercy with the justice and reach out with love rather than criticism.

So I pulled out the post-its and left these notes:

I'm so glad I did.  It totally changed the mood in our home (as you can see from the silly girl in the picture above).  If I had greeted them with wrath and anger, they would have become so defensive.  Instead, they smiled, said thank you, and did their jobs.

I think this month I would like to strive to be more mindful of answering with love rather than criticism.  I am sure there will be plenty of conflicts come my way, but why not give it a try to show some mercy and come to someones rescue and pull them up rather than pointing down at them?  I don't mean make it "easy" for them-- let their be consequences, but let there be a little love and service, too.  And leave a Love Note along the way.