“I have an invisible bucket.”
This got my attention. And what he’d said was so much more interesting than The Washington Post article I was reading about the latest hate-filled thing Donald Trump had said.
I looked up from the paper, over the lunch dishes, and across the table at my 5-year old son.
“You do?”
“Yes,” he continued, “with me all the time.”
“Oh! That’s right,” I replied in a sing-song mommy voice, now remembering the special book he’d been taught at the beginning of the school year.
Fill a Bucket by Carol McCloud explains that we all carry a bucket with us each day. It can be filled with good things or bad things, and its contents are mostly determined by us. Yet we can help others fill their buckets by speaking to them kindly and showing love through our actions. Others can do the same for us. Negative words and the like have the opposite effect – they empty peoples’ buckets. But the secret jewel in living life knowing about these invisible buckets, is that you can enrich your own – that is, you can fill your own bucket – by filling others’ with love.
For whatever reason, I wasn’t feeling especially loving that day, and the article I was reading was probably draining my bucket a bit. But the good news is that the work we do as parents day in and out can pay off when we least expect it.
“So,” I said, “What’s in your bucket today?”
He climbed down from his chair, took a couple steps over and put his face very close to mine.
“So much goodness.”
I wrapped my arms around him, buried my face in his neck, and kissed his little ears and cheeks until he wriggled free, giggling, “Mommy, Stop! Stop! Stop!”
My bucket was filled for days.
May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer.
– Psalm 19:15
