How the courage of Paul Revere can give ME courage :)...

"Teaching Kids About Courage"
By Oliver DeMille
Some lessons are more difficult than others.
Any parent or teacher can attest to this reality.
Math is a little harder to learn than reading for some kids (and vice versa for others) and music and art are often easier to start than reading.
While there are exceptions to this pattern, almost every young person learns some things more easily than others.
One lesson that is difficult to teach is bravery.
It is essential to Leadership Education, because, as Churchill suggested, courage is a primary virtue because it guarantees the application of all the others.
But how can we teach courage to our kids?

The simple answer is stories.

When we come face-to-face with great courage in the lives of others, we naturally value it in our own.
It takes more than this to become truly courageous, but this is where it starts for most people.
I wish all today’s children and youth could know “the rest” of the Paul Revere story.
Most kids have heard about the two lamps in the church tower and Paul’s ride through the countryside shouting “The British are coming!”
It’s a fun story, with high drama.
But most of us haven’t heard the whole thing.
After Paul had been riding and warning people for a long time, he was cornered by a British unit and captured.
This is where story really gets profound.
Historian Page Smith wrote:

The officer in command rode up and quizzed Revere. Where had he come from? Boston, Revere replied.
“When did you leave?”
“About ten o’clock.”
“Sir, may I crave your name?” the officer asked courteously.
“Revere.”
“What, Paul Revere?”
“Yes.”
Revere’s name was well known to the British as a patriot courier and spy, and the other men in the patrol began to curse and denounce him.

At this point, Paul had a choice to make.
He could go along with his captors, not telling them anything that hurt the colonial cause, but not antagonizing them in any way.
Or he could take them on directly and wage war against them with the only weapons at his disposal—his words.
The second option took a lot of courage (some would say it was a dumb idea as well), and he really had little to gain from it.
But he might help the cause a little if he could get this detachment to stay out of the conflict—or even slow them down a bit.
Apparently he had already made his decision long ago, because he didn’t even try to protect himself.
The historian continues:

“You’ve missed your purpose,” Revere replied boldly.
“Oh, no. We’re after some deserters who’ve been reported on this road,” the officer said.

Clearly the British officer was still trying to hide the fact that the British were planning an attack.

“I know better,” Revere answered. “I know what you’re after. You’re too late. I’ve alarmed the country all the way up … I should have five hundred men at Lexington soon.”

Talk about bold! Reading his words, it’s hard to remember that Paul was a prisoner—on the night of a secret military attack, and a known enemy of the British.
He’s lucky he wasn’t immediately shot.
But he ignored all that, preferring to openly declare his purpose, his treason in warning the colonists for miles, and the fact that the British would soon be outnumbered by men with guns—because of him!

That’s Bravery.

He seems to have wanted to put doubts in the enemy’s minds, to hopefully slow them down and keep them from getting to Lexington in time to fight the colonists.
He unflinchingly put himself in worse danger, hoping to divert the officer and his men from joining the coming battle.
When I tell my kids this story, I’m always moved to tears at this point.
I just can’t thank the founding fathers and mothers enough.
They were going to suffer so much in the years just ahead, but they heard Paul’s call in the night and flocked to the battlefield.
It’s amazing. It’s moving. It’s what made America great, this initiative of the regular citizen.
And here is Paul Revere, captured, in mortal danger, a gun literally pointed at his head, boldly arguing with the British officer and telling him that he, Paul Revere, is the reason he and his men will soon be shot at by hundreds of rebels.
He didn’t hide it, try to explain, give excuses.
He did the opposite.
He put himself directly in harm’s way to help the cause.
As he had ridden from town to town and farm to farm, he must have worried about what would happen if the British caught him.
But when they did, he looked them directly in the face and told them he was the cause of their biggest problems! Smith wrote:

At this alarming news, the officer rode off to confer with the two soldiers who had initially stopped Revere. The three returned at full gallop, and Major Mitchell, the senior officer in the little detachment, placed his pistol at Revere’s head and told him that if he did not answer his questions truthfully he would blow his brains out.

Revere didn’t shrink. He said:

“I call myself a man of truth. You stopped me on the highway and made me a prisoner. I do not know by what right … I will tell the truth, for I am not afraid.”

He didn’t beg or hide his part in it all. He boldly announced it.
Then he insulted the officers by telling them they had no right to stop him.
In all of this, he ignored their positions as agents of the government and stood boldly for the rights given by God and morality.
They must have wondered if he was a little crazy.
They told him they would kill him if they were attacked, and he continued to tell them to get ready because the whole countryside was going to stop them.
He kept the soldiers highly on edge and nervous, so they traveled more slowly.
When I get to this part of the story, I ask my kids, “What would you do in this situation?”
I don’t think there is just one right answer, and in real life I’m sure each of us would have to decide what to do.
But I’m proud to live in a nation where a man like Paul Revere would sacrifice himself to try to give his neighbors even a tiny, little advantage.
I hope a lot of regular Americans today would have this kind of courage.
I believe that reading history and sharing the stories of great men and women, how they used courage to stand up for the right in many times and ways, is essential to any great education.
It is a key part of TJEd and any leadership education.
We need more parents and teachers who study history, share great stories, and take the time to really talk about them with every child and youth in America.

That’s real mentoring.

Oh, and when the British finally took Paul’s horse and left him in the middle of the night on the side of a remote road, did he head to the safety of home?
No, he walked to where Sam Adams and John Hancock were meeting and asked what else he could do.
Then he set out, on foot, to join the fray in Lexington.
More tears.
I just can’t help it.
What is freedom really worth?

Would we do it today?

Or would we stay home and hope for someone else to fix our nation’s problems?
Two months later Abigail Adams took her young son John Quincy (age 7) to the top of Bunker Hill to watch the battle, ignoring issues of safety because her son needed to experience what the battle for freedom was all about.
I think learning courage wasn’t too difficult for him—he just had to watch his mother.
I doubt she knew that her young son, “Johnny,” as she called him, would someday be the president.
But she knew he needed to witness the cost of freedom.
She later said that the exploding of bombs was “marvelous,” because it signaled the battle for what mattered most.
There are children like Johnny in your homes today.
And there are such fathers and mothers as well.
Our kids need to know these men and women, these amazing people who risked and gave their lives for freedom. Knowing them is a step toward courage.
And it’s our job to teach them these stories.

The Tongue of Angels

The following counsel from Elder Holland is so precious and so hard to remember sometimes! Tongue of Angels

May I expand this counsel to make it a full family matter. We must be so careful in speaking to a child. What we say or don’t say, how we say it and when is so very, very important in shaping a child’s view of himself or herself. But it is even more important in shaping that child’s faith in us and their faith in God. Be constructive in your comments to a child—always. Never tell them, even in whimsy, that they are fat or dumb or lazy or homely. You would never do that maliciously, but they remember and may struggle for years trying to forget—and to forgive. And try not to compare your children, even if you think you are skillful at it. You may say most positively that “Susan is pretty and Sandra is bright,” but all Susan will remember is that she isn’t bright and Sandra that she isn’t pretty. Praise each child individually for what that child is, and help him or her escape our culture’s obsession with comparing, competing, and never feeling we are “enough.”

Moving

It's funny.

I have less than 10 days here left, and I still haven't really started packing.  I am moving 11 people overseas and I haven't started packing.   What is it that is making me drag my feet?  I love it here.  I love the peace I feel here.  I love the slower pace of life, I love the isolation that makes me crazy sometimes, but most of the time is a blanket of forgetfulness around me and my family.  I love the people.  Can I just say how much I love these people?  These good people that are true pioneers?  These good people that come to church, wrapped up in their own blankets of isolation, whom I wish I could wrap up in my arms and comfort, or find out more about who they are by listening and understanding them? Dear Zsuzsi, dearest Eva és Zita, Aniko és Orsi, Margit, Ilona, Gyongyi, Bobi, Nora, Sister Wiggins, Barbara,...sigh.  And that is just who are in my branch right here! They are all so dear.  I am so glad for facebook and that I can "see" and talk to so many of them that way still!

So, I think I will have to officially start packing.  This is nothing like the feeling that I had coming to Hungary.  Why is that? Maybe it is because I am not sure if I will ever come back?  Sigh again. The morning is beautiful.  Birds are singing.  The air is cool.  I will look on what to cherish. 

Lies we tell ourselves

I felt that I should post the following on facebook, violating the "too long" rule, I'm sure :).  Here it is for my own "sacred record" of my brain and life:

""If you are lying to yourself anyway, may as tell yourself a good lie." -Leslie Householder.

This is powerful stuff.  Let me tell you.  For YEARS I have told myself, especially subconciously, "I am a mean mom.  I don't have any patience.  I am fat. (I know... I'm a woman.  I say that, too.) I crave chocolate and sweets when I am tired.  Food makes me happy.  I hate it that I yell when I am mad." etc. etc. etc.  Everytime I did something to prove myself right, it just reinforced it.

Well, I decided to write a mission statement a few months back that was, just like me, idealistic.  "A lie," I would tell myself, "but an ideal to shoot for!"  I wrote things like, "I mother with soft and gentle speech.  I work everyday to make my relationship with my friend and companion, Quinn Biesinger, an eternally joyous one.  I always make time for family. I find joy and rejoice in the golden moments, the drops of awesome, the tiny miracles that make up my life!"  Here's a good one, "I look myself in the eye and I love myself." lol

Guess what?  It started working!  Even if I found myself still proving myself wrong, I found that sometimes I was proving myself right!  And I started doing it more and more!  Sometimes I would yell at the kids again, and think, "Yeah, WHATEVER I mother with soft and gentle speech!" Sometimes, I would look in the mirror with anger or frustration and grit, "I look myself in the eye and love myself!"... but more and more I would see myself doing these things!!

So I thought, "Well, if it works for that...let's experiment!"  So I did.  I started telling myself things like, "I am slender and fit.  My body is healthy and it craves things that are good for it and that keep it that way.  I take time to exercise and love the feeling it gives me."  And guess what?!  This is more often starting to be the truth than my "old truth" of, "food makes me happy" or "I just don't have time for exercise" or "I just can't help myself and I am going to eat more because it makes me happy!"  Powerful stuff!

This morning, as I was repeating and reading the different "good lies" I want myself to believe :), it hit me.  All those years, I am sure there were times when I was proving my old lies wrong!  I WAS being a good mom, mothering gently, having patience,...although, maybe not loving myself :(.  I just didn't believe it and so it didn't stick!  I didn't have any statements in my self-conscious that were being proved RIGHT by my good actions!

Now, if I want to believe something, hope to believe it, or even think, "I'll never believe it," I write it down, stick it on a post-it on my mirror, and read it, look at it, think about it, and feel gratitude that I can truly be that someday.  Sure.  I still yell, get grumpy and miss a lot of those drops of awesome and tiny miracles that make up my life, and eat five brownies fresh from the oven (last night) still oozing with yumminess until my stomach hurts...but I am changing, getting slimmer, feeling more joy, and mothering more gently.

Like I said, powerful stuff."

Giving up control...

...of things already outside my control!

--two year olds :)
--spills
--other people's schedules

Time to stop pretending to be "Manager of the Universe"!

Thanks, Leslie, for your awesome post: "Stop the World--I want to get off!"

"As James Allen describes in “As a Man Thinketh”, when a man completely and genuinely alters his thoughts about his [problem], and discovers the true perspective that God intends for him to adopt, it will “become so out of harmony with his mentality that it falls out of his life as a garment is cast aside, and, with the growth of opportunities, which fit the scope of his expanding powers, he passes out of it forever.”

I like the way Wallace D. Wattles put it: “You can advance only by more than filling your present place.”

Don’t wait until you have the time to start something new and grandiose. Be grandiose where you are. In other words, be a spectacular you, right where you are, in just the very thing you are already doing.

If you want to have a better job, be bigger than the job you already have. Do it better than you ever have before… enjoy the feeling that comes from doing well, and before long, it will not be able to contain you any longer. Old circumstances will fall away and new ones will present themselves which will give you more opportunity for growth.

Do I mean, be a superperson and get 10 times as much done as the next person? NO. I simply mean, be present. If you are completing a task, allow yourself the pleasure of enjoying the task. Do it carefully and well, but most importantly, choose to enjoy it.

If you’re busy getting a lot of things done, and simply cannot slow down, you CAN do the same things you are already doing with a calm spirit. Much of the time we get all worked up and frantic about our deadlines and pressures, but we have to remember that the things that we do and the things that are happening around us are nothing more than events. We’re the ones that add the ‘stress element’ to the equation. In fact, if we can go about our day calmly, we will accomplish more than if we try to force things to happen faster. Force negates. What you push will push back. That’s one of those laws.

So much of what needs to happen is out of your control, so quit trying to control it! It’s not your job. Your job is to do the things that YOU can do, and trust God to handle the rest. If you are calm, He will. If you are frantic, He seems to step back and let you try to handle it on your own, so that maybe you’ll learn a lesson. At least that’s my interpretation of how He seems to have handled me. I finally had to ask, ‘How many times must I experience that feeling of abandonment before I learn that I CAN’T do it on my own anyway??’

I’m learning to calm down, and trust. Let’s resign as Manager of the Universe. Let’s have faith that by keeping a calm spirit, we will be in the right ‘vibration’ to allow the blessings to flow our way. Keeping a frantic spirit prevents the blessings from flowing. We cut ourself off from the Source of all good when we demonstrate our doubt through our stress. A faithful heart has no place for stress and worry."