Choices, choices

America....land of the free, home of the brave.  Freedom.  We are free to choose.  We are lucky to live in a Country that gives most of us that privilege.....but there are smaller, day to day choices that we must make in our lives.  Most of us have the freedom to choose to be positive or negative, loving or unkind; all day long we are presented with these decisions, every single day.  

Yesterday, I went with my daughter to a retreat at church to prepare for the sacrament of reconciliation; at the retreat, the kids were divided into groups and given four different presentations.  One of the presentations asked the kids to make some choices; whether or not to: kick an opponent on a soccer team to make a goal, tell Mom that they caused a small crack the china cabinet while playing ball in the house or not, or taking lunch money and buying ice cream instead of pizza, etc. Different scenarios were given and, of course the kids (in their parent's presence) chose the right answer, but caved at the pizza question, when asked if the pizza looked gross. Many of them chose to use their money to skip the pizza, like Mom wanted them to, and buy the ice cream anyway.  It was nice to see the kids choosing the "right" answer, but I couldn't help but think about how many kids would have to put "lying" on their list of sins when they went to confession. :-)

The 3rd presentation was a game: Sanits vs. Angels, where they split the kids up and asked them questions.  When it came time for the question: "Name of one of the 10 commandments" my daughter very proudly said: "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife?"  Which prompted the Director of the program to ask, "Is that what they are teaching you at your Catholic School?"  Ugh.  Although I was proud that she was one of the only kids who knew a commandment, why couldn't she pick a nice one, like "Thou shalt not steal?"  Either way, good for her....she chose a right answer.

It is always heart warming to know that there are many more today making right decisions, vs wrong ones.  I wish the news would report on more of those, that is probably why I make the choice not to even watch the news most of the time. It's a choice I choose to make. 

Loudly yours,

Alicia