From the book, "Single Moms Raising Sons; Preparing Boys to be Men When There's No Man Around"
By Dana S. Chisholm
We will not forget the day we needed God on such a grand scale! God bless each and every family effected - and God bless America.
By Dana S. Chisholm
We will not forget the day we needed God on such a grand scale! God bless each and every family effected - and God bless America.
"Every morning there is an opportunity to teach your sons about commitment and consistency. Did you wake up this morning and the world was spinning out of control? No. And I can guarantee you will not wake up to chaos tomorrow – because God is a God of order. Point it out to your kids every morning. He made the sunrise just for them…every day. Take the time to train them, to teach them and coach them that God is a man to be counted on. Boys need consistency. They need to know they can rely on us and on God. And that takes time. The only way to do that for them, to instill that in them, is to model consistency for them until they live it and respect it in their own lives.
Praying for Firemen
One thing we do in our family is when we are driving in the car and we hear a siren, we take a moment and say a prayer for the victims of wherever that siren is going, and for the firemen going to the call to help the people. We take turns doing the praying, and I pray with my eyes open, obviously. But, we always, every time, stop and say a prayer.
One particular morning we were rushing to get to school because I was running late, as usual. Nate was in his first week of kindergarten and I was concerned about him on the playground in the morning with the “big kids” so I usually drove them and then stayed for a little while to keep an eye on him. Of course I stayed back far enough that they could walk all by themselves. They needed their independence, you know, by kindergarten and fourth grade.
So, I got to the playground with coffee in hand and there were more moms there than usual. “Can you believe what happened?” I had no idea what they were talking about. “I can’t believe those towers came down – they say 50 thousand people a day go through there!” It was 7:30 am on the West Coast on September 11, 2001 - already 10:30am in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. I had not seen the news that morning because we were rushing around concerned about kindergarten. Suddenly that wasn't important. I was in shock and refused to believe it at first. Friends had just come back from there and been on the Observation Deck of the Twin Towers. I didn’t believe the moms telling me this. Then they said the words that pierced my heart, “its been on the news all morning – every channel. Didn’t you see it?”
CJ had been watching the TV all morning as I was rushing to get Nate ready! My mind immediately rushed to the boys – what had they seen? I found the boys on the play ground and went to them as calm as I could be and told them that I needed to tell them something terrible and I wanted to talk to them about it before all the kids at school started talking about it. Both boys had already seen the images of that morning. CJ told me that there were no cartoons, so he had watched the towers come down over and over and the people running and scared. I asked him what he thought, and both boys just as calm as could be said, “Mom, I prayed for the firemen going to work in it and the victims they were going to help.” And that was it. They had practiced time and again their disaster drill and when it was really needed, they knew exactly what to do.
Of course, the boys rallied over the next few months just as the rest of the country did. They drew pictures and wrote a letter of encouragement to the President. And we dealt with their anger and frustration at wanting to protect our people. They were little men right from the beginning – ready to defend us all. But, it was the time, the commitment to turning to God whenever they heard a siren, that prepared them to do the same when it was needed on a much more grand scale. We should not forget that grand scale. And help our boys do the remembering for each siren every day. It will be a rock they can lean on when things go terribly wrong. A habit in their lives."
http://www.amazon.com/Single-Moms-Raising-Sons-Preparing/dp/0834123088
Praying for Firemen
One thing we do in our family is when we are driving in the car and we hear a siren, we take a moment and say a prayer for the victims of wherever that siren is going, and for the firemen going to the call to help the people. We take turns doing the praying, and I pray with my eyes open, obviously. But, we always, every time, stop and say a prayer.
One particular morning we were rushing to get to school because I was running late, as usual. Nate was in his first week of kindergarten and I was concerned about him on the playground in the morning with the “big kids” so I usually drove them and then stayed for a little while to keep an eye on him. Of course I stayed back far enough that they could walk all by themselves. They needed their independence, you know, by kindergarten and fourth grade.
So, I got to the playground with coffee in hand and there were more moms there than usual. “Can you believe what happened?” I had no idea what they were talking about. “I can’t believe those towers came down – they say 50 thousand people a day go through there!” It was 7:30 am on the West Coast on September 11, 2001 - already 10:30am in New York, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania. I had not seen the news that morning because we were rushing around concerned about kindergarten. Suddenly that wasn't important. I was in shock and refused to believe it at first. Friends had just come back from there and been on the Observation Deck of the Twin Towers. I didn’t believe the moms telling me this. Then they said the words that pierced my heart, “its been on the news all morning – every channel. Didn’t you see it?”
CJ had been watching the TV all morning as I was rushing to get Nate ready! My mind immediately rushed to the boys – what had they seen? I found the boys on the play ground and went to them as calm as I could be and told them that I needed to tell them something terrible and I wanted to talk to them about it before all the kids at school started talking about it. Both boys had already seen the images of that morning. CJ told me that there were no cartoons, so he had watched the towers come down over and over and the people running and scared. I asked him what he thought, and both boys just as calm as could be said, “Mom, I prayed for the firemen going to work in it and the victims they were going to help.” And that was it. They had practiced time and again their disaster drill and when it was really needed, they knew exactly what to do.
Of course, the boys rallied over the next few months just as the rest of the country did. They drew pictures and wrote a letter of encouragement to the President. And we dealt with their anger and frustration at wanting to protect our people. They were little men right from the beginning – ready to defend us all. But, it was the time, the commitment to turning to God whenever they heard a siren, that prepared them to do the same when it was needed on a much more grand scale. We should not forget that grand scale. And help our boys do the remembering for each siren every day. It will be a rock they can lean on when things go terribly wrong. A habit in their lives."
http://www.amazon.com/Single-Moms-Raising-Sons-Preparing/dp/0834123088
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