BEING THE GOOD: Seek to Serve

By Wendy K.

The night before my preschooler started school last fall my husband was giving him a Father’s

Blessing and I felt inspired to tell him something very specific. I told him there is one thing I want him to do above all else this year in school: Be a friend to everyone. I told him listening to the teacher is necessary, learning is important, but I will be most proud if that teacher reports that my little boy is a friend to everyone. My son is a good, friendly kid. I wasn’t worried he wouldn’t be kind, yet I felt very prompted that this is the lesson I need to teach my boys and it needs to start now. I felt the weight of my responsibility as a mother and the importance of this message. What matters most at the end of this life? Not school grades or worldly successes, but the way we treated God’s children. 

As Maya Angelou said, “People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did. But people will never forget how you made them feel.” Be a friend to everyone. BE THE GOOD.

Fast forward a few months to Parent-Teacher Conferences. I hadn’t brought up “Be a Friend to Everyone” in a while and as I was leaving I casually asked my little boy if there was anything I should ask his teacher. He thought for a moment and said, “Mom, ask Mrs. L if I’m a friend to everyone.” I was so happy he’d internalized this concept. I asked Mrs. L. She acted a little surprised by the question, but then she told me, “Yes. He is.”

It’s easy to say it to your children, it’s harder to live it. A few weeks into the school year, a family showed up uninvited, unexpectedly at my doorstep during dinner. They were there to return dishes from a meal I’d bought them earlier in the week. That night I was busy. I had an appointment to get to. I was annoyed that they choose the dinner hour to pop over. I became further annoyed when somehow returning dishes led to them telling us they hadn’t yet had dinner that night and the next thing I knew they were at our kitchen table and I was feeding the six of them AGAIN. I was upset. I wasn’t prepared, we didn’t have enough food and this disruption was going to make me late.

As I fumed over the stove, figuring out how to make our meal stretch, I felt my son’s eyes on me and I remembered my own words: “Be a friend to everyone.” Everyone. It’s easy to be a friend to our friends and our loved ones. It’s harder to be a friend to those who upset you, offend you or do you wrong. How would I want my children to handle this situation? I would want him to share. I would want him to be a friend to everyone, regardless of how much it put him out. I needed to remember my own lesson. I needed to live it.

What does it mean to be a friend to everyone?