We started Sunday Night Family Bonfires at our house this summer as a time for our family to spend together, talk about the week ahead and talk about the kids’ hurts and feelings. There are a lot of emotions our kids deal with that other kids don’t simply because they are adopted. There are also emotions because of the trauma they’ve experienced, and there are hurts because they love and lose and miss and worry about foster siblings who come and go. As cheesy as a “family meeting” sounds, it’s been really helpful to our family as a time for them to share with us how they are feeling and how we can help them. We try to make a goal every week of something we can all try to do better. The very first week we did this meeting we had no idea what to expect or if our kids would really respond to it. But I as a parent wasn’t ready at all for their response.

Their first request for our family goal for the week: More hugs and kisses. That’s what they wanted from us. Not less yelling, not candy, not trips to the water-park, not even vast amounts of time. Just more hugs and kisses. Its a little bit of a gut-punch when I realize I’ve been slacking on something I love to do. It stings a little more when I realize all those hours spent agonizing about how I can better meet their needs would have been much better spent giving hugs and kisses. But how simple right? I don’t need to read 5 different books about parenting kids with trauma and I don’t even need to overcome years of learned behavior (although I do still chip away at that). I just need to give more hugs and kisses throughout the day. They just want to be loved.

They are loved of course. But they don’t always feel it, they need to be reminded. Isn’t that so simple? And isn’t that my problem too?

My friend reminded me of something the other day when I was complaining about a conflict I was having. She said she was trying to pull weeds out of her flower bed but the ground was so hard she couldn’t get them out. If you’ve done this, you know (especially that lovely quack grass), you can’t pull weeds out of hard ground, they just break off the tops and the roots stay put. She said her mother-in-law, who is a much more experienced gardener, advised her “you have to pull those after it rains” I finished the sentence for her. I know this too. The best time to pull any weed is after a rain, after the soil is softened they pull out so much easier. But there are some especially in very hard soil that just won’t come out at all unless it’s after the rain. “Sometimes, the soil needs nourishment before you can get out a weed,” she said. “Sometimes, people need to know they are loved, they need to be loved, before you can address and problem or a sin that needs to be rooted out.”

I cried, her words were so right. I had been pulling and pulling at weeds in hard soil and never thinking about adding a little water. I wanted the weeds gone first, fix the problem, then water the plants. But that’s the wrong order. Love first. Pour love out first and the problem becomes so much easier to fix.

Its embarrassing to me to admit to you that my own kids had to ask for more hugs and kisses. Its embarrassing to admit I forgot you need to love first, correct second. Something so simple, yet we keep forgetting. And if I’m being even more honest and embarrassed, I can admit that I forget that I myself need more hugs and kisses. I need to be reminded that I am loved. By my husband and kids and friends and family absolutely. But that won’t do it for me. I need to know I am loved by my creator, the only one who can love me the way I’m made to be loved.

I have reversed the order many times. I have thought I must get rid of these weeds and then I will go to Him. If I can just get my heart looking just right then He will love me. But He is wanting to pour down His love on me first. I am loved always, of course, He and I both know it. And yet, I need the hugs and kisses. I need the time spent hearing His Word. I need the time spent sitting quietly with Him. I need to sit and meditate on His sacrifice for me on the cross. I need to receive Him in the sacraments. I need to give myself back to Him every day. Because when I am loved, when I know and understand that I am loved, then I can do anything. I don’t need material things because I am a daughter of the King of the whole entire world. I don’t need the approval of others because I am loved by the creator of them all. I don’t need to worry about what tomorrow might bring because I am loved by the author of tomorrow. I can endure this hard road I am on because He has walked a harder one out of love for me.

When my kids are fighting with each other, or acting up, it’s often they need more hugs and kisses. When they can’t love their brother, its probably because they have forgotten how they are loved. When I am having a conflict with my spouse or with a friend or a coworker, there’s a good chance its because one or both of us has forgotten we are loved. To make this post completely cheesy and quote the Disney movie, Frozen: “People make bad choices when they’re mad or scared or stressed, throw a little love their way and you’ll bring out their best.”

Yes, more hugs and kisses. More love. I will give it. I will ask for it. I will let it heal our hardened hearts. For my kids…for me…for the world.

“We love because He first loved us.” Let us pray and ponder and sit with these words today.

Beloved, let us love one another, because love is of God; everyone who loves is begotten by God and knows God. Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love. In this way the love of God was revealed to us: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might have life through him. In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as expiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also must love one another. No one has ever seen God. Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us. This is how we know that we remain in him and he in us, that he has given us of his Spirit. Moreover, we have seen and testify that the Father sent his Son as savior of the world.Whoever acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God remains in him and he in God. We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us. God is love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him. In this is love brought to perfection among us, that we have confidence on the day of judgment because as he is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear because fear has to do with punishment, and so one who fears is not yet perfect in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a brother whom he has seen cannot love God* whom he has not seen. This is the commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

1 John 4:7-21