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GO WASH YOUR HANDS!
by: Bette Owens

How many times have we had to tell our children to “go wash your hands?” Then it seems like we have to tell them "That is not good enough, do it again." "Make sure you use soap and water." "Do both sides, wiping them on your shirt is not washing them." Then we hear, "Mom, they look clean to me!" We are horrified if they pick up a cookie and take a bite with filthy hands, yet how often do moms live in front of their children with filthy hands?

In James 4:7-8 it says, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw nigh to God, and he will draw nigh to you. Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double minded." “Cleanse your hands” here is talking about what we do. God is telling us to clean up what we are doing. As a mother, how clean are your hands? When we draw nigh to God and get closer to Him, we can see more dirt in our actions, in what we are doing. We must work hard to keep our actions clean, especially when we realize that our hands touch and affect our children.

We are busy doing all kinds of good things. We are faithful to church, teaching Sunday school, working the nursery, making sure our children get to school on time and to all the youth functions. How could our hands possibly be getting dirty? Just like a child misses the dirt on his hands, sometimes the dirt on our hands is hard to see.

Here are just a few areas where I know I have to constantly keep washing my hands. One area is my mouth. Our actions speak a lot louder than our words. We often do more damage with our mouths than with our hands. This is an area where we ladies constantly get in trouble. We need to be careful that our actions match our words. We have mastered making our words sound real good, but are we living what we say? Mom, be careful that you are backing up dad in everything at home. If it is wrong when dad is there, it is wrong when dad isn't there. If it is wrong to dress a certain way at church, then why is it right at home? We need to start cleaning up our talk and make sure our walk matches our talk. One reason we have trouble as a mom, getting our children to stop back talking is because our talk is not right. We need to wash our hands in this area.

Are your hands dirty with overreacting? As women we have a big problem with overreacting and we don't even see it. Exaggeration is really lying. We blow things up and all out of proportion, especially when it comes to our children. If someone is trying to help us and let us know something is going on with our children, our natural reaction is to automatically get on the defensive and think bad of the person and justify our children. We get so worked up we make our children think they are a victim of bad judgement. We get everything so twisted that pretty soon our child's wrong is justified and it doesn't matter what the Bible says. We end up believing our own lies and don’t see that holding a grudge makes our hands dirty.

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