We stood patiently waiting our turn to check out at the dinner-time rush in the grocery store, and it was then that my son found a dime on the ground under the candy rack. It was always his habit to put any coins that he found on the floor into the donations collection container for St. Jude Hospital. He loved to watch the shiny metal currency go through the bright red and yellow maze of metal tracks that were precisely constructed to let each coin whiz down the maze. Eventually, it would drop into the bottom with a ‘clink’ as it hit the other hundred pieces of change that lay at the bottom of the plastic dome shaped display.

Our turn came to pay out and I began placing the full grocery bags into our empty cart when I heard a lady standing directly behind me at the opposite  register yell with a booming voice, “HEY!”.

I turned to see my son shrink back, his eyes wide with shock. He was three feet away from me standing by the colorful coin maze at the foot of the register I was using. I quickly assessed the situation to figure out what was going on when the woman started to loudly ask him what he was doing.  She was making a scene and my tender-hearted son was right in the middle of it. I could sense she was about to carry on in her threatening voice, accusing my son of something that I knew he wouldn’t think of.

Just as her voice started to reach a threatening tone, I quickly raised my voice over hers and addressed him, “Son, you’re ok. I can see exactly what happened and I see that your coin got stuck on the track. You were trying to tap and shake it to get it to drop down, and I know your intentions weren’t to steal what was inside. You’re not doing anything wrong, and you may come stand by me.”

He breathed a sigh of relief and immediately obeyed, his coin still stuck on the metal track.

The woman behind me immediately quieted down the second I addressed him as “son”. Several customers turned their heads our way as the store associate who was scanning the other woman’s items made a stifled giggle that even I could hear with my back turned to her.

We climbed into the car to make the short drive home. I knew that the whole situation needed to be addressed beginning with the suggestion that we shouldn’t shake the donation container, even if our coin gets stuck, but to also talk about the lack of good judgement the woman had displayed. The minute the car door shut I turned to look at my boys, but before I could get any words past my lips my son broke open a golden opportunity.

“I despise correction from strangers,” were the exact words that came from my ten-year-old son who has made it his goal this year to expand his vocabulary (because what ten-year-old uses the word ‘despise’?).

Bingo. There was a lesson in this that was huge. How easy it would have been to jump on the band wagon and begin to attack the stranger who assumed too much before understanding my son’s actions. We could have had a three-minute bashing party the whole way home, but my son would have missed an opportunity for growth. In doing so, I would have elevated him by drenching him in entitlement rather than leading him toward the excellence of a teachable and moldable spirit. What a perfect moment for planting tiny seeds into the rich and ready soil of my young son’s heart. Our desire is to raise our boys to live a life of integrity and a teachable heart is the very foundation of virtue. I knew my words mattered right then.

Although there was rustling I could hear in the back seat, no one else said another word until I turned onto the main road.  I quietly began by quoting a scripture that I had learned as a child. “You know son, in Proverbs the Bible says, ‘The fool despises correction'”. (Proverbs 1:7, 3:10, 12:1, 15:32, 23:9)

Well, if the car wasn’t already quiet, it was completely silent at this point. My son loves God deeply and he knows the importance of the Word. Nothing else I could have said would have impacted so deeply. Only true God-given-Wisdom could use such few words to weigh the heart, and not one of those words were my own. The reason I knew that Scripture so well was because I’ve had to use the verse to weigh my own heart at times.

This was no longer about the woman who embarrassed him. It was about the position of my son’s heart.

“Honey, I’m not calling you a fool,” I began. “Sometimes God will use other people to teach us things, just like the actions of this woman. Maybe it wasn’t the lesson she wanted you to learn, but it’s about the lessons we need to learn in life. A teachable heart is tender and flexible. God can work with a heart like that.” After a pause, I ended with this, “You know, King David had a super teachable heart which is why he was known as a man after God’s own heart.” (Acts 13:22, 1 Samuel 13:14)

He was quiet, but I knew he understood. He’s a thinker, just like me.

Over the following week I began to see that he was striving to be teachable through his school work and his willingness to help out. He even made up his mind to play the Bach Minuet that he was sure was to be the end of his violin life forever…and he practiced with a revived passion.

I’m grateful for days like this as a parent. Every day my children wake up a little older and I see the little boys disappearing as each of their faces look more like men. We’re given a certain amount of time to cultivate the hearts of the next generation and to plant seeds that will determine greatness, but it’s what we do with these moments that will determine a mindset of entitlement or integrity. What a difference those two paths make in their lives and the lives of those who surround them.