i don't know

I sat with my 12-year-old daughter, trying to explain how if she would “just be kind to her younger brother and respectful of others in the house” she could do almost anything she wished – the world would be hers.

“Why can’t you just be nice to him? LIfe would be so much more enjoyable."

She looked at me with all sincerity and said, “I don’t know.”

For whatever reason, it didn’t seem like one of those dismissive “I don’t knows”. It seemed authentically contemplative.

She made me think…

In my random acts of rudeness, God probably asks me the same thing.

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(what we request of our children, God requests of us)