Read Proverbs Chapter 25.
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\u201cIf your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.\u201d Proverbs 25:21-22 CSB
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Here is how I paraphrase this verse: Kill them with kindness. That is what my mother always taught me. Her words still ramble around in my head when I\u2019m faced with a difficult situation. The burning coals he is talking about in this verse, that is guilt. I can attest from my own life, my mother was the queen of making me feel guilty.
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On my 21st birthday, I worked. \u00a0I didn\u2019t go out and celebrate because a friend of mine had been killed when he celebrated his. \u00a0After a night of drinking too much, he crashed his car into a tree. I decided I wanted to live past my 21st birthday, so I worked. \u00a0I chose to celebrate a few days later. Funny the notions we get in our heads. I went out, and I drank too much. I was leaving the bar with someone I should not have been leaving the bar with when I heard my name being called from across the parking lot. \u00a0It was my mother. She knew what I had been doing; she had waited in the parking lot for me so she could drive me home.
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I realize you would not think my mother and I were enemies, and we truly weren\u2019t. But on this particular night, I was the enemy of her heart. I was in direct contrast to her hopes and dreams for me. I was being young and stupid as we all have been at one point. It broke her heart what I was doing to myself. She heaped on the burning coals to my head with her love. She killed me with kindness.
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That night, the love she showed me changed my life. \u00a0I don\u2019t remember her yelling at me. I don\u2019t remember her berating me. \u00a0I remember hearing my name being called across the parking lot. I remember her love for me. \u00a0I remember her kindness. I\u2019m not going to say that was the last night I ever did something stupid. \u00a0I will say that it made me stop and think about what I was doing with my life. I will say, to this day, it helps me stay grounded in the reality that my actions do affect other people\u2019s lives. \u00a0It helped me learn that it really isn\u2019t just about me. I have faltered many times since then, but I have never forgotten the lesson she taught me by showing me love. She showed me love when it was the last thing I deserved.
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Kill them with kindness, it is never the wrong thing to do.
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Read Proverbs Chapter 25. \u201cIf your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink; for you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.\u201d Proverbs 25:21-22 CSB Here is how I paraphrase this verse: Kill them with kindness. That is… Continue reading Kill them with Kindness<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","without-featured-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":652,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.honestreflections.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}