better than you

I feel like I'm failing. I know I'm not, but it feels like it sometimes.

My Tristan is all about competition these days. Not sports or anything but in life.

"I beat you"
"Mine is bigger"
"I'm faster"
"I'm better"
"I have more"

These are things I hear daily. I always have the same response, "God loves us no matter how slow or fast, small or big, last or first". I say it at least four times a day. Over and over and over.

It never seems to sink in. The next hour or day, he will say it again. And he believes in his heart that he is better for being faster or bigger or better. I ask him what the truth is and he will repeat what I've told him but he doesn't truly believe it...yet. He believes the lie.

I keep telling myself that I can't quit repeating the truth and that one day his heart will remember it!

I quietly feel my heart cry every time he says those things. I wish it weren't so. I wish it didn't matter to him. I wish the world didn't teach him that you have to be better than everyone and everything else. But wishing doesn't change those things. My heart, my mouth and certainly my God can change those things though. God can use me to show my son the truth.

This is what being a parent is all about. Teaching our children the truth, no matter how long it takes or how hard the truth is.