Monday, November 28, 2011

Ways to Encourage #1

The dreams we have while we’re sleeping are usually pretty strange. But, I do believe there are times when we can learn something from our dreams. For example, a couple of months ago, I had a dream that gave me an idea to share.

In the dream, my family and I were sitting at our dining room table, passing around several pieces of paper. At the top of each paper was a name or a photo of one member of our family. For example, there was one paper for me, one for my husband, and one for each child. The papers went around the table and each of us took turns writing out something encouraging for the person on the paper.

A couple of weeks later, I decided to give this a try with our two children for a “creative writing” assignment. Our daughter was given a paper with her brother’s name on it, and vise versa for our son. Let me share with you what they both wrote:

Our 8-year-old son wrote:

I like [my sister] because... She loves dogs, and she loves me to play dogs with her, and she loves me too.

Our 13-year-old autistic daughter wrote:
I like [my brother] because... I love him. I like to play with him. We can play catch with a ball. We can play with stuffed dogs. We can play tag.
These are very simple sentences they each wrote, but special in many ways. They will be kept in a 3-ring binder and treasured to look back on. It is always nice to look at encouraging thoughts someone has written about you.

We haven’t done this activity with the entire family yet, but might do it soon. I’m sure it would be a good activity to do during the Christmas season. I encourage you to try it with your own family, and maybe even make a yearly tradition of it.

This suggestion will be the first out of a series called “Ways to Encourage.” Over the next several weeks, I will be sharing ten different ways we can bring encouragement to our family and friends, or even to a complete stranger. They will be simple things we can do to bring a smile to someone’s face.

If you choose to try one of the suggestions I mention, please share it in the comments section below (or send me an E-MAIL and I can share it for you.)

Also, if you have a story to share about how someone encouraged YOU in a special way, please share that as well.

Have fun with encouragement!

.

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