On Children and the Messes We Make…

This morning, as the Mississippi sun rose on a cool November day, I was awakened by the whack of a wet pull-up diaper across my face. I AM NOT EVEN LYING TO YOU. Our two-year-old is potty training. In his excitement he shouted, “Mama, I go tee-tee in the potty.” (Obviously, we are still working some things out… the pull-up was in fact dirty. But, I applaud the effort. And let’s be real—He’s just in it for the M&M’s.)

This stage of child development is the sole reason that I will not produce any more humans from my body. Of all the number of reasons for the Layson family to halt reproduction, this is it—this one reason.

Last week our precious, young, beautiful, perfect babysitter, Rachel, was afraid that she smelled funny… or she smelled something funny. She innocently told me that she kept getting a whiff of something strange—like umm say, urine. She was confused. (Bless it. She is so kind and good.) I, on the other hand, was immediately suspicious. I assured precious Rachel that this was not a figment of her olfactory imagination. As it turns out, the two-year-old in training, had an accident ON. MY. SOFA. This is almost the WORST potty training incident to date. (There was one potty training nightmare that is still too fresh, too traumatic for me to discuss publicly.) But I will tell you this, Advanced Steam Extraction will be here TODAY to clean the couch—I would have paid them double if they could have come out on a Saturday!)

These are the parenting moments that make me question my sanity. As I stand back and survey my life, I think to myself, “How exactly did I get here. Have I always lived in a house that smelled like human urine? Was there ever a time that I didn’t feel like I was in an episode of Hoarders?”

On Saturday, Steve and I decided we would get the house clean. After an entire day of cleaning—We were up by 6:00 am—this is what my laundry room CURRENTLY looks like. (Ask me how much of that laundry is actually MINE.)

(All you precious young couples, you know what you should do for pre-marital counseling? Go live with a couple that has three kids, two full-time jobs, and one house. If you don’t kill each other by the end—Congratulations! You pass. Go and live happily ever after. You have my blessing.)

On the way home from church, I noticed that there were stickers on the back window of our minivan. Like most parents, I despise stickers. Nothing good ever comes from stickers. My 6-year-old stares blankly at me when I tell her that I don’t actually want a BEAUTIFUL sticker of Queen Elsa to stare at me everyday from the passenger side window of my car… I know! What’s wrong with me? Crazy, right?

She knows the rules. I tell her that she will have to remove the stickers/ goo from the windows herself. But guess what? She can’t. (Approximately 0 parents are surprised by this information.)

And once again, someone in my family has made a mess they can’t clean up. After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, it hit me. My entire life is full of cleaning up other people’s messes.

Other people—my people—make messes ALL. DAY. LONG. We’re talking BIG messes. DISGUSTING messes. And do you know what’s worse? They don’t even have the DESIRE to clean this stuff up. I mean, seriously? (Insert disgusted look/ Dramatic eye roll.)

You know, I get pretty mad at my kids, but they get their propensity for messing things up … FROM STEVE … me. When I’m in the middle of all their mess, when I turn into that crazy mom, I talk myself down from the ledge, and remember this— I screw up all the time. BIG SCREW-UPS. INTENTIONAL SCREW-UPS. I KNOW THE RULES AND IGNORED THEM ANYWAY SCREW-UPS.

And then there’s this…

“As it is written:

‘There is no one righteous, not even one;
there is no one who understands;
there is no one who seeks God.
 All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.'”

(Romans 2:10-12)

I screw up and I can’t fix it. I can’t even come close—and most days, I don’t even want to. But then God…

^“You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

Again, seriously? (Eye roll) Why? Why even try to save us? Why even try to clean this thing up. You know we’ll just mess it up all over again tomorrow—Just like my kids—Just like your kids. But you know? Tomorrow, I’m gonna clean up the messes that they make. I’m going to keep on teaching… and correcting… and loving. Why? Because of Love. Because they’re mine. Because I want to.

And maybe that’s the thing about amazing grace. Maybe it’s so amazing because we belong to a God who chooses to clean up after us. Who chooses to love us. And not because He has to… But because He wants to.

I don’t know whose messes you’ve been cleaning up lately. But there’s something about this that makes all that cleaning a bit easier to take. After all, who could have made a bigger mess than me?