You are AWESOME. (You might just not know it yet.)

A few weeks ago I read this AMAZING post called “Drops of Awesome.” Now, I know there are some of you who might not take the time to click over there to read it (even though I STRONGLY encourage you to) so I will give you a brief synopsis here.

Do you ever think about writing and have that little voice in the back of your head that says, “You’re going to work on your book? Well whoop-dee-do. What, are you going to pound out 500 whole words today? Well isn’t that exciting. That puts you on track to finish this book sometime around...never. Especially when you count in the days and weeks and months that you won’t even look at it. You’re not a writer. You’ll never finish this stupid book. Why bother?”

Do you ever hear that voice in other aspects of your life? You think about inviting one of your kids to sit down and read a story with you, and that dumb voice says, “Nice. So you think that will just erase all those times you ignored her while you were surfing facebook? Ha, right. Don’t hold your breath for the Mother of the Year Award.”

I think we all know whose voice that is, and it’s like poison to our spiritual development. In the post “Drops of Awesome”, Kathryn Thompson says that we can combat those negative thoughts. She says that every time you think of doing something good and then do it, it’s like a “drop of awesome” in your bucket. Pick up that dirty sock on the floor instead of stepping over it like the last 10 times you walked past? Drop of awesome. Stop doing the dishes for a second to look at your son’s new Lego creation? Drop of awesome. Write 1 more sentence on your WIP? Drop of AWESOME.

When we make good decisions, the bad ones we might have made in the past don’t matter. In that moment, you are awesome. Who cares if you haven’t written a word in 8 months? If you sit down today and write something- anything- in that moment you are someone who writes. Drop of awesome. So what if you are always behind on the laundry? The moment you put a load into the washing machine you are someone who does laundry. Drop of awesome.

In her post, Thomspon talked about sharing this lesson with some young women at church:

As an object lesson when I was teaching this to the teenage girls at church, I gave them each a small dropper and I put a 2-quart bowl on the table. I told them that throughout the lesson they would get the chance to put drops in the bucket for every Drop of Awesome they could think of that they’d done. I promised them that we would fill the bowl to overflowing by the end of the lesson. 

With about 5 minutes to go, we had barely begun to fill the bowl and the girls were looking around at each other nervously. The promised overflow did not look likely. Were they not awesome enough? 

At that point, I pulled out a large pitcher labeled ATONEMENT and poured water into the glass bowl until it was spilling out all over the table and the towel the bowl was resting on. The class went silent.

You are AWESOME. You just don’t know it yet. But God does.

Every once in awhile we get to see what our drops of awesome have amounted to. I had one of those moments a couple of weeks ago with my kids. It was a hectic morning- I had to go to two awards assemblies at school for the kids, it was the day before Valentines Day so I was trying to get some special things prepared at home and making sure the kids had their cards for their classmates all ready, and life was just a little crazy. Well, I went to the school for my son’s 3rd grade assembly first. He received awards for the honor roll and excellent conduct (yay!) and then they announced the children- just one in each class- who were chosen by their teachers to receive a special Core Values Award for being responsible, trustworthy, kind, and positive. My son was chosen from his class. Wow! My heart swelled!

Later that afternoon I came back for my daughter’s 1st grade assembly. She too received awards for honor roll and excellent conduct, and she too was chosen by her teacher to receive the Core Values Award from her class. Um, DOUBLE WOW! My heart was ready to burst, not only from joy for my two little ones, but from relief that okay, maybe I’m not such a lousy mom after all. Maybe these kids really are becoming the people that I try so hard and hope and pray they will be every day. It was such a validation to know that of all the 20+ kids in their classes, they each stood out to their teachers as really good kids.

My heart was also touched by the fact that God gave them to me to be their mother. How blessed am I??

So today ACT on those good thoughts and IGNORE that stupid niggling voice. Put some drops of awesome in your bucket and BE awesome. Because you are.

(By the way, this also reminded me of this post by our own MMW Amber.) :-)

Just did my post. Drop of awesome.