Parents, Are You Roundin' Up?* Words From COVID 19 quarantine

 Parents, are you roundin’ up? In elementary school we learned about roundin’ up (an East Tennessee pronunciation of “rounding up”). Anything over halfway to the next higher number could be rounded up when you’re roundin’ up. Rounding up can be a good thing, if say, a store gives you the opportunity to round up to give the extra change to a worthy cause (it’s a little thing to each customer, but it can add up to a lot of help for people in need). Roundin’ up is also a good thing if you are a cowboy with a lot of cattle, or you are a mountain climber finally reaching the precipice while climbing around the peak, or if you are a baker when your dough ball begins to rise, or if you are running the 440 (or now the 400 in meters) on the last turn ahead of everyone else. But roundin’ up isn’t so great when we get a little older and we are put into the next older category based on our age group, or when your midsection gets more girthy and roundin’ up as your age is roundin’ up. As a “middle aged” human the last two seem to be happening to me more and more and today I turn 57. But a great thing I have also discovered having been ‘round the sun a few times, is that if the corners of your mouth round up, you can incrementally round up the overall mood of any room you enter. Regardless of the mood of the room a smile will change the whole positive outlook. Apparently, there is some brain science at work here. We are all desperate to know that someone is glad to be with us. A genuine smile communicates, “I’m glad to be with you!” When our brains recognize that someone is glad to be with us and they truly care about us, we can escape some fear of rejection and we can relax and do our best work. Fear puts us in a negative spiral that makes us not glad to be with people and everything rounds down like our furrowed brow or our frowny mouth and eyes. So, regardless of whether things “roundin’ up” are perceived as good or bad, we can always be roundin’ up the corners of our mouth to communicate “Regardless of what’s happening, I’m glad I get to be with you.”

God was communicating to His people through Moses and Aaron that He is glad to be with them. Now they had done some knuckleheaded things and He had let them know those things were unacceptable, but He also let them know He was always glad to be with them. He tells His servants, to bless the people and let them ask Him to smile upon them. Numbers 6:22-26 (NLT2) says, “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Tell Aaron and his sons to bless the people of Israel with this special blessing: ‘May the LORD bless you and protect you. May the LORD smile on you and be gracious to you. May the LORD show you his favor and give you his peace.’” When God smiles on us He gives us favor and peace... shalom and blessing. As we seek God and ask Him to round up the corners of His mouth to show us He’s glad to be with us, we can smile on the people around us too. Are you roundin’ up?

Hang in there people! God is glad to be with us! I’m praying for you all!

42Ouida Middleton, Melanie Middleton Vincent and 40 others

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