Love

For the past few days, we have been reading from this Chinese Christian book -圣灵水果屋1 (translate - House of the Fruit of the Spirit 1) after our worship. All the shorts stories in the book are categorized into 9 sections - 9 characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit- love, joy, peace, patient, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

We have been reading the stories from the Love section. We talked about how true love is self scarified and not self gratified. Den was really touched by some of the stories. What is more amazing, I started to see her behavior changed this few days.

Being the only child in the family means she almost always get the best duel. Everyone give her the best. I was worry she is going to grow up to be selfish and self centered. In fact, I started to see her grew to be more self centered.

I kept telling her you are very blessed so you need to bless others even more. But I can see that she was going to the opposite direction. The more she has, the more she insist she have to have. She would insist on her right and refused to give it to those who might not deserved but need it more.

One of the last straw for me was the incident happened two weeks ago. We were sitting in a bus going home, and one stop before ours, an old lady holding a baby came up. There were still some seat at the back of the bus, but I can see that she wont be able to make it to the back since the bus started to move. So I get Den up immediately and offer our seats to her. Den was angry and thought it was totally unfair and unnecessary. I was so mad that I scolded her at the bus stop right after we alighted the bus.

Since we started reading the book, I can see that she is making effort to do the right thing. For example, she was willing to let her dad dad sleep on her new pillow. I bought her to choose the pillow and she loved the pillow. But that night, her dad dad was complaining he did not sleep well on his current pillow and would really like to sleep on hers. Usually when it is something new, she will refuse to share it with anyone. But that night, she surprised us by offering him her new pillow (even though I can tell she really wished she wont had to). Her dad dad took up her offer. I praised her for doing the right thing.

There are a few more incidents like this for the past few days and the latest happened last night. We promised to bring her back to the super fun public swimming complex every Sat. Today is Sat but her dad dad has been coughing very badly for the past few days. So last night, I told her tomorrow, mommy will swim with you and dad dad will just stay and wait for us.

Her response surprised me. She said, but then dad dad is so poor thing, have to wait for us and cant swim. She actually suggested we stay home and don't go. I was so pleased with her and right away I let her know.

I am praying the changes is not temporary. It will become part of her character. :)