Learning to give grace

 

On our trip home, before our first flight, I had the girls hold out their empty hands.  I then filled the hands up with grace.  I told them that grace is undeserved loving actions. We knew that there would be times when we didn’t feel loving and didn’t want to be loving along the journey, but we could remember that I had given them extra grace so that they could share it with our family.

 

This seemed to work.  I also would give “refills of grace” when attitudes and emotions were getting a little hot.

I decided to continue this behavior modification at home.  A friend had drawn pictures of the girls (aren’t they good?) and I printed off some grace and stop pictures with names on the front and magnets on the back. 

 

So, if Allison shows Olivia grace and lets her keep blowing the whistle in the house without asking her to stop, Allie would put a grace picture from her bag on Livy’s photo.  Or is Emma is driving Liv crazy and Olivia wants her to stop, then Liv can choose if she wants to ask her to “stop” or wants to “give grace.”

It is not a bad thing to ask someone to stop, but you are only allowed 6 stops per day per person.  You do have unlimited grace magnets to give to your sisters.

This hasn’t stopped all of the little bickering at our house, but it has cut it back some and we are all learning what grace means!