January 16, 2012
Spaghetti and meatballs are in our regular family dinner rotation.
Family dinner is a precious commodity. Some evenings it can be done and over in a quick 15 minutes (and I silently tally the ratio of how long it takes to cook vs. consume), but no matter the length of the meal, or even what’s on the table, it’s my most cherished family time. Honestly, it may be the only completely together family time we have that day.
One of our dinner table routines is to go around and share our high/low for the day. We all say the best thing that happened in our day along with the worst thing. It’s always a great insight into what’s at the forefront of everyone’s mind, especially the little people—tidbits we might other wise never know about.
This week the conversation moved swiftly from tidbit to significant with my youngest sharing, “My low for the day is that the king was shot.” I was amazed to hear my kindergartner and second grader have a conversation about the work of Martin Luther King. Both were obviously impressed with his great achievements, the achievements of just one person.
We talked together about how one person can make a difference, one person can have a dream in a world filled with (at the time) 3 billion people and then that one person can work and work, and that work makes a change for the betterment of all our lives.
As I watched the excitement in my girls’ eyes with the dream of all the things one person can do for this world, my heart was thinking about MLK and all the conversations, love, pain and dreaming that must have been shared around his childhood family dinner table, and how those shared moments centered on food and family gave that one man strength to change the world.
It inspired me to keep encouraging my girls to dream, one meal at a time.
