Wisdom from an 8 year old...

I know many of you know about my lunch buddy, Malique. I have plastered photos and quotes by him all over Twitter and Facebook. He's a special kid who I have learned a lot from.

To be honest, when I first started having a lunch buddy I had the mindset of "I am going to do a good thing. I will help this kid. I will serve." Now I think Malique is the one who signed up for the lunch buddy program.

I could see him walking up to the program director and saying, "I want to help. Give me a 27 year old man who is trying to learn to love and let him spend some time with me. I will whip him into shape."

A few weeks ago I showed up at my normal time expecting to see Malique in line for lunch, he wasn't there. I asked some of his classmates where he was and they told me that he got in trouble and was in the classroom. I walked down there and he came walking out and his face was upset. He began to explain to me that a boy in his class wouldn't stop talking to him so they both got in trouble. (I suspect he wasn't that innocent, but I used to do the same thing.)

A week later I asked him about getting in trouble and if the rest of the day went ok. He was picking up some kind of food with his fork and said: "Yeah, it went fine. You know, I just had to turn my day around."

How many times do we let the small things effect the rest of our day?

Sometimes Malique doesn't drink his milk. He just eats and then throws it away, but he always gets strawberry milk. So one week, I grabbed it and drank it. It was gross. I said, "Malique, how do you drink this stuff? This is nasty." He said that he liked it and that was that.

Wednesday, we were sitting and talking and I noticed he had a chocolate milk. I assumed he got it because I told him strawberry milk was gross and he wanted to be like me. I asked him why he got Chocolate Milk instead of strawberry this time and what he said has opened my eyes this week.

He said, "I didn't get it for me."

He got it for me.

Keep teaching me Malique. Preach on brother.