English or the Heart?

Do animals understand English? Or do they prefer Japanese? Or maybe Cretan Greek? I ask this because it just occurred to me that animals do not understand the words we say, it is how we say them. It is our body language that they understand, and our tone, and our volume. They speak love, sadness, exuberence, nastiness, gentleness, they speak the same language as our hearts do. I think children are the same way. Although they can understand our language, and may eventually learn several languages, I feel they are best spoken to through the heart. That's where God speaks to them, and that is where they are most capable of hearing. When you speak to a child in the language of love, they listen attentively and soak up as much as they can, and then that love floats back out and wraps itself around this world. But the same goes for violence and meanness and ugliness. When those ways touch a child's heart, and they usually do, it hardens their heart and what is spewed back out is sadness for the world. Unfortunately, I fear that more children experience the latter rather than the former.

There is so much brokeness in this world, and that brokeness transcends generation upon generation upon generation. We treat our children the way we were treated. We expose them to the same hurts we were exposed to as children. We continue to pass along the same destruction that has always surrounded us, because we are broken and hurting and incapable of seeing things from a different perspective other than the one we've always known. It is not until someone, adult or child, decides to stand up and choose differently for their family, that this generational curse is broken and one's history becomes the past. I am in the process of changing the future of my family. I will not pass along to my children what was passed along to me. I will heal my brokeness in order to help them heal the hurt I've already imposed on them in their short little lives thus far. They will not be a product of their lineage who, while best intentioned, did not have God at the heart of their lives, and thus lived half-lived lives.


So I am choosing to speak to their hearts. I will speak to my children's hearts and help them become fluent in the language of love. The great part about this is that, as I've said before, love given is returned ten fold, and love from a child is of the purest kind. I want to break the ties that have held me in bondage for so long, alcoholism, poverty, divorce, brokenness, distance from my Father. So that they will have no hold over the lives of my children. And then once I've learned to just purely love all over my children (which I am getting pretty good at), I will learn to love all over other broken children. I will help other children see that there is goodness in this world and that they are loved by their Father, if no one else. I will help our next generation learn to love rather than hate, and I will do it on a wide-scale, affecting many. God has shown me that He is healing me and will use me for good, and children are at the heart of the matter ~ that's where brokenness begins. But that is also where brokenness can be healed and children can become the people they were created to be, not a product of those who came before them, broken and lost. Showing a child the way to God and wholeness delights our Father in ways we can't imagine. This affords them a different future, a different life ~ the life God intends. This is my desire, to be a light for children, before they become broken adults and suffer through years of darkness the way I have.

Because I know you have put this in my heart so dearly Father, I also know that you will guide me through this and provide the people and resources needed to reach the masses. But first I believe you still have some serious work to do here Lord. You've taught me so much and brought me so far. But let's tie it all together, what I've learned, and stamp it on my heart forever. Bring the outside, what I do, into direct balance with the inside Lord, so that this goodness you have placed within can shine for all to see. So that my actions mirror my thoughts Father, instead of the ways of my past. Because my heart is pure Lord, you have broken down the walls and cleaned house. But the ways of this world still dictate my behavior and I am out of balance. Until I can bring balance into this life, I cannot rightly teach your ways to the littles of this world. I won't preach what I don't practice. So continue to cleanse Lord and direct these footsteps, openning doors while closing windows on the past, equipping me to truly shroud darkness for your children, the children of this world. Show me the way Lord in the way you do. How I love your ways and thank you Father for your love. I love to love!