The other night I presented my children with a rare, sugary gift. \u00a0Ice Cream Store. \u00a0Three flavors to choose from: Mint Chocolate Chip, Cookies and Cream, and Vanilla. \u00a0And toppings from their mother’s usually inaccessible cake decorating bin. \u00a0I expected excitement (which they delivered on). \u00a0What I did not expect: heartfelt hugs and repeated declarations of how much they loved me. Could ice cream have such a positive impact on our relationship? \u00a0But then what really got me thinking. \u00a0After the store closed they did everything I asked them to do — they put on their pajamas, brushed teeth, and got into bed. \u00a0Was it that simple? \u00a0By satisfying my children’s physical desires I could gain affection and cooperation! \u00a0But it goes deeper than that, I think, even deeper than the feeling of wanting to listen to others when they do nice things for us. \u00a0It goes to who we are — souls AND bodies. \u00a0We need to remember that we don’t just need to love the soul of a person. \u00a0We also, and even more so, need to love the body. \u00a0Doing a material favor is worth a lot. \u00a0Yes, it’s important to be frugal when it comes to satisfying our own appetites, but when it comes to others…give and give again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The other night I presented my children with a rare, sugary gift. \u00a0Ice Cream Store. \u00a0Three flavors to choose from: Mint Chocolate Chip, Cookies and Cream, and Vanilla. \u00a0And toppings from their mother’s usually inaccessible cake decorating bin. \u00a0I expected excitement (which they delivered on). \u00a0What I did not expect: heartfelt hugs and repeated declarations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/20130730_111303.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=998"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/998\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hordinerconsulting.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}