It’s been a bit of a fighty, shouty week in our house.

Both kids *LOVE* their new teachers, new classrooms, new highlighters and twisties and clean blank books.

They don’t love their new hard blistery school shoes not yet scuffed soft.

And the week rubbed deeper, chafing some soul blisters.

On Wednesday night the boys cried simultaneously in their beds and Murray and I took turns to console them.

(Then we rocked silently in a corner.)

Cam cried because Kevin (his magnifier) (all his devices are named after famous Minions) is too big for his desk and he wishes his desk could just look normal like everyone else’s and he wishes his books looked normal like everyone else’s without fat black lines and he wishes he was just normal like everyone else.

Scott cried because he wishes we would spend as much money on him as we spend on Cam, and he wishes he could also have big fancy magnifiers like Cam and he wishes he could blow up his homework super large and it’s all so unfair.

And I was like,

Kill me now.

But there’s always, always hope, right? And God promises wisdom when we’re all out of ideas.

So I thought about Wonder, which we took the boys to see at the end of their holidays. So, so great!

Auggie’s sister says to him:

‘You can’t blend in when you were born to stand out.’

And here’s the thing –

Every masterpiece is created to stand out. That’s what makes it a masterpiece – not a factory generic churned out in bulk. And God calls each one of us His masterpiece – created anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things He planned for us long ago.

We all feel the pain of the chisel chipping away to make us beautiful. We all feel the pain in different places, in different ways. Which is why Plato nailed it when he said that we should always be kind, because every person we meet is fighting a hard battle.

So friend, here’s to a year of daily kindness to our kids and ourselves as we allow the Master to do His wise work.

Everything really is going to be ok in the end.

. . .

Happy weekend to you! Feel free to share this post with your peeps.

Just FYI – we use Kids in Mind for every movie our kids are going to watch (or not watch, as it often turns out). They give ratings and detailed descriptions for sex/nudity, violence/gore and profanity. Really fantastic resource for families who care about what gets into the hearts and minds of their kids.

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