Of Powdered Milk and Words that Echo

Kids are selfish. Psychologists refer to it as egocentricity. Life is all about them. That's why you have to teach children that sharing is a good thing. That is why you have to teach children to think about others and that the things they say matter. Sometimes that selfishness turns into bullying. Physical bullying is devastating, but sometimes it's the words that people say that end up reverberating across the years.

Me. First grade I think

I grew up the youngest in a family of five. My dad was a steel worker and my mom stayed at home with us. At one point, my grandmother lived with us. So, there were eight mouths to feed, plus whoever happened to be at the house at the time, a cousin, a friend, one of my sister's boyfriends or my brother's girls.  My mom did a pretty good job of it. We never went hungry, in fact we probably ate too well. Up to and through most of elementary school the one thing we rarely had was real, whole milk. I remember making milk out of the powdered stuff in the box. I guess my mom did it because it was cheaper than keeping all of us in real milk, I never asked her.  If you've ever had it, even skim milk is better. It was just chalky water. When I went to school for the first time, in first grade, we got real milk with our lunch! I loved those little red cartons with the check mark on them. It was an elixir straight from heaven. I would drink carton upon carton at the lunch table. It wasn't even chocolate milk, just real, whole milk.

I was not a small child. If you look at my first grade classroom picture, I was bigger and taller than a lot of the other kids. My brother couldn't find those pictures, but he did find these other gems. I come from Lithuanian farmer stock, I have a sturdy frame. I take after my Dad and my Aunt Sally, both of whom were big people. My brother-in-law used to say, "Strong like bull-woman, can pull plow." Make sure you use a Russian accent when you say that in your head. Oh, and let me make it clear that was in reference to my ancestors, not to me or my sisters.

Me, second or third grade. 

When you put those two things together, it basically puts a target on your back. I remember a girl whom I wanted desperately to be my friend. A girl whom I thought WAS my friend. One day while we sat at the lunch table, she said something like this, "Gosh, Chris, that's a lot of milk. What are you, a COW?"  I remember how much that hurt, even though in the moment I laughed at it. It hurt not just because she said it to me, but because she said it in front of the little boy that I thought was the cutest boy in the class. That boy laughed right along with her. And that nickname "Chris Cow" stuck around for a lot of that school year. Honestly, I think it stuck around with me for a lot longer than that. Even now, it comes back at me like an echo across the canyon of time. I don't think that was her intention when she said it. She tried to be funny and be noticed by that cute boy. However, there are times when I look in the mirror and don't like what I see, those words echo. Often, when I don't want to go to the gym or I want to dive face first into a slice of chocolate cake, those words echo.

Now, it is entirely possible that my recollection of the incident is completely wrong but the point is those words aren't truth. They weren't truth even then. She didn't know that milk was something that I only got to enjoy at school. Maybe it wasn't a big deal to her, but it was for me. There's that egocentric self the psychologists talk about. I made the mistake, too, of making those words my own. I didn't have truth that could drown that out. I am not saying that her words caused me to struggle with my weight my entire life. My weight problem is a lot more complicated than words said by a first grader. What I am saying is we need to teach kids (and ourselves) to find truth that drowns out the echo. I needed words like these to drown out that echo:

2 Corinthians 5:16-17 "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!" (NIV)

Romans 8:37-39 "No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.  For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." (NIV)

I John 4:16-17 "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus." (NIV)

I pray that today when the lies that reverberate across our history enter your head and mine, we will replace them with truth.  I pray that as parents and significant adults in the lives of children, we will always speak truth and hope into their hearts. I pray that we will teach our children to use words that build up and not tear down. You see, these words are truth. New. Conqueror. Like Jesus.  There are so many more throughout scripture. These are the words that drown out the echo of lies and become the new sound of truth that reverberates across the canyon of time.