Coffee Anyone?

It's funny the things that stick with you and even more interesting the influence one person might have on a child.  We were sitting at dinner the other night and as dinner was wrapping up, my husband and I were giving out instructions for cleaning up for the evening, showers after, etc.  Our oldest, who never seems to know when the proper time to stop questioning "why" or injecting "buts" was doing the usual; complaining about having to do dishes, going on about how unfair it was, and basically exaggerating the situation to the point where you'd think she was working in a sweat shop.  She kept pushing the envelope in the usual teen way, and right before I was about to go into a parental lecture, my middle daughter said one word to her sister.  "Filter."  "Filter, Jessica", she said.

All four of the rest of us just stopped dead in our tracks, slack-jawed and staring at Sarah in her simplistic wisdom that was delivered so succinctly, so calmly and precisely.  Even Jessica stopped talking - a miracle in itself. 

I told Sarah that summed it up perfectly.  Jessica needed to learn to filter what went on between the thoughts swirling around in her head and the words that came out of her mouth.  It is such a simple concept, one that people of all ages of reason should practice and I wondered where on earth my ten-year-old had suddenly come up with this terminology that sounded like it had come out of a psych 101 class.  So I asked her. "Sarah, that is a wonderful way to describe it and something we can all practice.  Where did you learn that?" 

Now beaming, and obviously proud of herself, she told me a teacher she had two years before had told her class about filtering.  That filtering was going through your thoughts before saying anything and thinking through the consequences of what delivering them aloud would be.  Hence: filtering! 

So, for two years, my daughter had carried this around in the back of her mind and then when she saw a moment when it applied, it came to the forefront.  That teacher had left an imprint, one she probably doesn't even know about.  One that I thank her for now.  Of course, Sarah could practice filtering at times herself.  We all could.  And that's why I chose this as my topic today.

Think about it as a coffee filter.  You put the coffee grounds in the top of the coffee maker in a filter.  The filter keeps all the icky grounds out of the coffee letting only the water through, giving us a pure cup of coffee. Our mind is full of coffee grounds.  Mixed up thoughts.  Some that aren't so nice.  Some might be hurtful, spiteful, or disobedient.  Now, imagine a filter lining our brain.  The filter is us taking a pause, a breath to think about the consequences of what words we allow to escape our mouths.  That pause, that filter can allow only the good, necessary words to get through and keep all those "coffee ground" thoughts up behind the filter where they belong. 

Sure, there are always some things that need to be addressed, some things that might not be pleasant.  There are times where you might need to take a stand or stand up for yourself.  There are moments where you might have to speak a truth that's harsh, but someone needs to hear for a greater good.  But, think it through first.  Who are you saying it for and why? 

So my brief message today is "filter" and the credit goes to my daughter "Sarah" and her former third-grade teacher.