How The Cookie Cutter Crumbles

There are so many possibilities when it comes to the various personalities and tendencies we may encounter in our children. Extroverts need to talk more and have lots of activities and people in their lives; introverts need more time alone to ponder, create, and go into their inner sanctum to be refreshed.

Some children just really want affirmation and hugs and listening so they will feel loved. Others want you to do something with them—to be active alongside you. Others want sympathy and to have you understand all that’s on their hearts. Still others thrive on quality time.

We are to accept and cooperate with our children’s God-given personalities because God has work for them to do in this world that matches their personality and gifting. If we want to be God’s instrument to open their hearts, we have to study who they are and reach each one according to the personal design of his or her heart.

Children are not cookie-cutter copies of each other who can all be handled the same way. They long to be loved and valued as they are.

We must live in the tension between respecting the unique design that our artistic Creator crafted into the DNA of our children and building a bridge of love to their hearts so they will be more willing to listen to the messages we live and speak.

His Promises

The body has many different parts, not just one part. If the foot says, “I am not a part of the body because I am not a hand,” that does not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear says, “I am not part of the body because I am not an eye,” would that make it any less a part of the body? If the whole body were an eye, how would you hear? Or if your whole body were an ear, how would you smell anything? But our bodies have many parts, and God has put each part just where he wants it.

Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!

Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future.