Our swear jar holds all our ugliness, out in the open, in the middle of our kitchen table during Lent.
Lent is a time that is celebrated by families throughout New Iberia, Abbeville, Breaux Bridge, and Morgan City as locals wrap of the festivites of Mardi Gras. From local restaurants promoting seafood specials and area churches and organizations holding fish-fry Fridays, many of us celebrate Lent with seafood and prayer in New Iberia. While we enjoy the crawfish boils with our family and friends, local families also tend to practice the art of sacrifice and give up some of the things we enjoy and prepare for the Easter season.
Several years ago I decided to try a special project for our family during Lent. My goal was not so much a focus on being "good" and giving up things during this time but rather to focus on removing the negative things we say to each other, sometimes without even thinking about it. I grabbed an old container and the kids decorated it themselves. Once it was complete, we put it right in the middle of the most active spot in the house: the kitchen table.
As a family, I was shocked to see that we began to fill that jar up in just two days!
 Image by marekuliasz from Getty Images |
Each time we caught ourselves or someone else in the family saying something unkind or negative to another person, we called out "Swear Jar!" and then that person would write there name on a small slip of paper and place it in the jar. The goal was to of course be the one who had the least pieces of paper with their names in the jar. We even took it a step further, and if you caught yourself saying or thinking something unkind to yourself, you were to add a slip to the jar.
When we first began this on Ash Wednesday, it seemingly was all fun and games to "catch" each other in an act of unkindness or saying something negative. But as we began to get deeper into Lent, I noticed how they were not only catching the negative words or interactions with others but they were immediately changing what was being said or done.
My daughters were becoming aware of how they were interacting with each other, especially as the paper began to pile up in the jar. Whether that was because they simply wanted to be the one with the least in the jar, or because they were truly trying to make a change how they spoke to each other, I am not sure. I won't say that the one with the least in the jar was the winner, because after this little experiment, I honestly felt like we all were.
We have to teach our kids that not only speaking bad words or ugly words to someone else is hurtful, but that it simply just takes away from our own character. We sometimes get so wrapped up in life that we forget that our interaction with the ones under our own roof are some of the most important relationships we have in our life. It seems we can easily be unkind to the ones that we love the most. Doing this project helped us to become closer as a family and show a little extra love to each other.
Doing this for the 40 days of Lent, we were able to learn that although we can not control: the ugly things said about us or to usthe past hurts we carry that plague our thoughtsthe way someone speaks to ushow others treat usBut we can definitely control: πhow we respond to them πhow we think about them and work on forgiveness πhow we speak to others and ourselves πhow we treat others and ourselves |  |
At the end of Lent, we had a family dinner to celebrate and destroyed the slips of paper with our names on them. We learned about forgiving others and forgiving ourselves, and that is always an important lesson to carry forward.
We'd love to hear your feedback on this article, especially if you try this with your family during lent. Email us at mackidnewiberia@macaronikid.com and let us know if you tried this with your kids.
