When I was in elementary school we had this week long themed week called I.A.L.A.C week. There are similar themes in schools today, some are called spirit weeks or unity week. At my sons school it’s a “celebration of reading” week. Basically how it works is Monday through Friday the kids are all given a little bit of a break to do fun stuff like wear their pajamas to school, or a have a crazy hair day. It’s a way of building up a team spirit atmosphere in the classroom and I’m sure a myriad of other benefits that I have no idea about because I’m not a teacher. But something about it MUST have been valuable because the model is repeated in almost every school.

It was no different for me and my classmates during our weeks back in the early 90’s…except for the message behind it. We were all given little buttons with the I.A.L.A.C acronym on it. It stood for,” I am love able and capable”. I can remember the teachers trying to get us to memorize this and kind of burn it into our minds. And here I am at 31 years old writing a blog post about it?! Well Done Grace Warner Elementary, well done. As I was laying in bed last night for some random reason ( my mind is a chaotic and rapidly busy place dudes…) this popped up and I began to really think about it. I woke up this morning and googled it. Sure enough, the I.A.L.A.C. message is still going strong.

This elegant and simple message of teaching children they are lovable and capable started to blow my mind. Maybe for the first time ever I really understand what the point was. It’s EVERYTHING. It’s the truest desires of the human heart.

How differently would my life look if I had believed those words and instead of just saying them for a week at school? What if I had started saying them to myself everyday? Now, I’m not saying that I wish my life were different. I’m grateful for the way my life has turned out because it led me to my faith, my husband and my children. But if I had actually believed in myself in this way…man…woulda, coulda, shoulda right?

What if I actually made an effort to raise my babies this way?? So much of the way I knee jerk discipline my kids breaks them down. I HATE it. I’ll confess that more times than I’d like to admit I’m more concerned about my kids behaving and not embarrassing me than I am about building up who they are and letting them just be kids. That’s a hard sentence to type and send out into the world…but it’s real. What if I was careful to build them up to believe they are SO lovable and MORE than capable to accomplish whatever they set out to do? What if I made MORE of a conscious effort to pray and try to protect them from whatever it is that starts to grow inside us that tells us we aren’t lovable? What if instead of getting frustrated at things that are left undone or chores that aren’t done the “right” way, I shifted gears and started focusing and celebrating the things that my children are capable of and DO WELL?

What if I started giving myself the same grace?