Southend Gross-Out Day and the Joy of Yes

In February 1998 our family moved into a rambling, four-storey Victorian semi that can best be described as ‘needy’.  We consequently spent a frantic first nine months doing urgent repairs and addressing the extensive list of remedial works that our mortgage company specified as needing to be done as part of the loan agreement.

Every spare minute was invested in getting the house weather-tight and habitable before the winter set in, and the option of taking a family holiday wasn’t on the cards. Our four children, aged 5 – 12 at the time, were left to roam wild that summer (‘feral’ is the term that springs to mind) and as long as they kept off the scaffolding, didn’t paddle in wet cement or play with the builders’ tools we thought we might get through the crisis in one piece.

After a while it dawned on Sally and me that everything we were saying to the children was preceded by the words ‘don’t’ or ‘no’ and it was exhausting and demoralising. We realised we needed to do something to change the dialogue and so the concept of ‘Southend Gross-Out Day’ was born. The plan was to take a day out at Southend-on-Sea, with its kiss me quick hats, arcades and over-priced funfair, and to EVERYTHING the kids asked for the answer would be ‘Yes!’

On the journey Mark  tested the concept with ‘Can I have £1 million?’ but we quickly grounded his expectations with the understanding that the requests had to be practically achievable … and so the fun began.

We drew up at the seafront about 10 o’clock in the morning outside a doughnut stand. ‘Can we have a ‘doughnut?’, ‘Yes’,

‘Can we go on the pier and play on the slot machines?’ ‘Yes’.

‘Can we …?’ ‘Yes, yes, YES!’

As we staggered back to the car in the dark there was one last request ‘Can we have some candy floss or toffee apples?’ ‘Yes of course’.

The children piled into the car clutching their sugary feasts but it was only a matter of a few minutes before everything was quiet in the back seats. Looking in the rear view mirror I saw four children, fast asleep with toffee apples stuck to their foreheads and candy floss clumping in their hair.

It was exhausting, exhilarating and quite simply the best thing we ever did as a family.  Being able to say ‘Yes’ without reservation was liberating for us as parents and twenty three years-on our children still talk fondly of Southend Gross-Out Day.

There is undoubtedly a joy that comes from saying ‘Yes’, from accepting the world for all its imperfections and grasping the opportunities that come our way. One of my favourite verses in the Bible is 2 Corinthians 1 v. 20 which says: ‘For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God’.

No wonder ‘Yes’ feels so good – it is in the DNA of God himself. Just as we human parents long to be able to say ‘yes’ to our children, so God longs to be able to say ‘yes’ to us, his creation.

So, are you willing to give it a go, to see what adventures lie before you? All you have to do is say ‘Yes’ 😂

(This whole concept is explored further in Danny Wallace’s brilliantly funny book ‘Yes Man’ which I highly recommend).