Integrity - "Feel The Difference"

Integrity

Last school year my eldest daughter had her first encounter with practical integrity.  The kind where one bad decision paves the way for a lifetime of dishonesty.  I tucked her in that night (yes – I still do whenever she lets meJ) and she was unusually quiet.  This girl is many things and ‘quiet’ has never been one of them.  I asked her what was wrong.  “Nothing.” She replies.   I wait.  Usually waiting and saying nothing gets her talking… again.  “Well, something.”  I’m still quiet, anticipating a delicious morsel of information.  “I took a Social Studies test a few weeks ago and accidentally looked at someone else’s paper.  Then I changed an answer.  When I got my test back it was a 100%.  I feel bad.”  I stay silent.  There must be more.  There is always more.  “So then I got another test back from him the other day and it was a much lower grade and I didn’t see someone else’s paper.  So I thought I was even.”  Huh?  Teenage logic is hard to follow.

When I think she is finished, I tell her what she already knows.  “Honey, you still feel bad because whether you meant to or not, you cheated.” She sighs.  “What should I do?” Again she knows the answer but needs to hear it out loud.  “You need to talk to your Social Studies teacher.” The words terrify and relieve her. Before she protests, I remind her that it has been several weeks and she still feels bad about this.  I also tell her how proud I am that she feels bad.  She doesn’t understand.  I explain, “The older you get, the easier it gets to lie, steal, cheat and completely destroy your conscience.  You start rationalizing things you do professionally and personally.  It is always wrong, but we try to come up with ways to make a lack of integrity ok.  It is never ok.  And I am so grateful that you feel the difference.” She is confused, “Feel the difference?” I start to laugh.  “It’s that little flutter in your tummy and your heart when you know you have done something wrong.  Ignoring it is when you get into trouble.”

Over her seventh grade school year, this child had many more opportunities to be dishonest.  Classmates grading papers often “missed” incorrect answers in Math and my girl would trudge up to the teacher’s desk, swallow her pride and “ask” for a lower grade.  My heart soared with Mama Bear pride and I was a little jealous.

When we are young, black and white is easy to recognize and feel.  Something is wrong or it isn’t.  As we get older, it becomes so much easier and comfortable to sink into murky shades of gray in our everyday decisions.  We ignore the ‘flutter’ and try to survive in a world that often seems to reward a lack of integrity.  Today, I want to you to feel the difference.  Return that extra change to the cashier.  Pay the extra money for your 12 year old to get an adult ticket at the movies (you know what I’m talking about, parents! J).  Play by the rules.  Remember what it is like not to just feel integrity, but ACT on it!

Forgiven But Not Forgotten

Last week my adorable, sweet dogs ran away from home… for the twentieth time.  Late in the evening, they found a critter in the back yard (a bird, a cat, a deer – who knows?) and were overcome with a desire to chase.  They came home the next evening - panting and exhausted - and covered in Tennessee ticks.  These ticks were strategically positioned on these suffering animals in places a forty year old mom should never have to stick her tweezers.  Days later while on a spring break vacation in Park City, Utah, I pulled my trusty tweezers out one more time to remove a souvenir tick firmly embedded in my own forty year old booty.  Definitely a new low.

As I gently performed surgery on my little hitchhiker, I considered the many times I anxiously waited for my poodles to come home.  Were they cold?  Did they meet an untimely death with a pack of coyotes?  What if they crossed Wilson Pike and collided with the midnight train?  As the struggling little tick fought the sucking gravity of the drain I realized, I am going to do this again – probably sooner rather than later. Defying the laws of nature and man, these prissy, but country French Poodles have more than doubled a lucky cat’s nine lives.  Naughty to the bone, they always make it back home. 

I tried in vain to stay furious with them.   I considered the vet bills, the grooming fees (“tick picking” doesn’t come cheap!) and emotional turmoil – but it was fleeting.  Eventually, they wormed their fluffy bodies back into my home and into my heart.  All was forgiven, but not forgotten.   Then the proverbial light bulb came on in my soul - the kind of self-actualizing realization that happens once in a lifetime.   Is forgiveness a mandate from God?  Do I have to forgive in order to be forgiven by the Man upstairs?  And the answer according to Christian scripture and many universal doctrines is most emphatically, yes.

A frustrated man asked Christ in the book of Matthew – “How many times should I forgive my brother?” I imagine him in a huff adding, “SEVEN?”  Jesus would be gentle but firm in his reply, “Oh no, no, no…  How about seventy TIMES seven?” (Matthew 8:21)  Paul later reminds us in Colossians 3:13 to “Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may against one another.”  Paul realized very quickly that failure to forgive another’s imperfection was to deny his own.  And Paul most certainly was not perfect.  He enthusiastically hunted down early Christians and martyred many for what he thought was right.

So, each time these gorgeous but oh-so-devious dogs of mine feel the call of the wild and leave home, I reflect on my own imperfections.  As you can imagine – I have been doing a lot of reflecting.  I can’t forget or dismiss the grief and annoyance they cause.  As people of character we are called to forgive, but we are most definitely not called to be doormats.   Out of love and concern for these animals and my own piece of mind, I have initiated “Operation Alcatraz” for Jolie and Juliette in my backyard (I am meeting with a fence guy today). 

In our humanness remember that though we can’t forget past wrongs at times, God most certainly does!  (See Micah 7:19)  He removes our iniquities from us when we truly repent of unrighteousness.  Take heart dear friends, and be generous in forgiveness and stingy with regret!

Character Comes First

As a K-12 educator with a great passion for developing character in young people, I now find my self teaching at a local university again.   I've had the unique priviledge of watching five to eighteen-year-old children try to find their way through life with the necessary moral compass to make responsible choices.

It is with this knowledge and conviction that I take my passion to a new level to explore what character qualities are lacking in our society. I have also set on a new journey to research and develop a new line of character development literature and curriculum to assist classroom teachers to introduce these concepts to students.

Welcome to ParrotCleat Studios. We hope you will follow our progress and the products we are creating to help children be their best, because they need to know that despite the pressures of our society character comes first.