Live with Flair for Kids: 3 Questions to Ask

Today I tell my children that it's getting harder and harder to blog each day. I feel like I've recorded so many extraordinary things in my ordinary days that I wonder if I've run out.

Then I recall in Psalm 40:5 a beautiful new mission: "You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told."

They are more than can be told.

In another version we read David's statement: "Were I to speak of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.

They are too many to declare. 

I won't give up! There's more, always more to declare. I'm inspired afresh!

As I talk about my blogging with my children, they insist I must not stop blogging.

"Well," I say. "Tell me, if you were me, what you would blog about today? What would be your Flair moment?"

As they ponder, I remind them both that living with flair has always been about these three questions:

1. What filled you with wonder today (and the more ordinary the object or experience, the better)?
2. Where did you see God at work today?
3. What negative thing happened that you could find the good, the beautiful, and the purposeful in? How could you spin a not-so-good moment into something wonderful?

I hear their answers--too many to recount--about embracing failure during the dreaded rope climb in PE (I owned my failure, Mom. I laughed at myself, and it was awesome. I was hanging there, one inch off the ground, owning my failure), about seeing God give opportunities to talk about the Bible in class (I told the whole story of Moses to the class), or about not giving into peer pressure at recess (I just said, No, and I did the right thing).

The list goes on, but this is my blog, not theirs. I learned in this moment that asking children these three questions builds a fantastic mental framework for them (one I now take for granted each day) and it provides great parent/child conversation.

I'm feeling so proud of this lovely conversation just as my daughter says to me, "I do know something really cool to share for your blog. Did you know that the delicious maple syrup we enjoy on our pancakes is tree poop? Tree poop. It's like waste that the tree doesn't need. It's poop. Essentially poop. That's right, tree poop. It's a byproduct of tree respiration."

I exclaim that the tree poop comment is the opposite of a live with flair moment because she's taken a delicious thing and turned it into something gross. She's laughing so hard. It's not really scientifically accurate, but now we're all laughing.

"That's not living with flair," I say. "That's so gross!"

"I know! But it's funny."

Everyone is laughing, and we'll never see Saturday Morning Pancakes the same way again. I suppose, for some of us, living with flair means plain old laughter at the expense of maple syrup.

And for the rest of us, we'll stick with wonder, God at work, and finding the good.