Kids are Messy

Jenny/ March 3, 2018/ Family Life

One thing I’ve noticed in my 7 1/2 years as a parent is that kids are messy!  Really, really messy!  They can take a clean house and reduce it to a tornado zone within just a few minutes!  And my kitchen table has uncountable scars, stains and unidentified marks on it from my children.  They can take a bathroom and completely flood it in about 2 minutes flat also.  My husband jokes that I clean our bathroom twice a day just by giving our kids a bath, because afterwards there is no need to mop; just wipe up with towels.

 

My youngest son has coated himself in honey and the older one once poured a whole bottle of hand soap all over his body…All I could do was gingerly pick them up by their arms and stick them in the bathtub!

 

But I’ve also learned something else, adults are messy too.  And our messes tend to go much deeper than peanut butter furniture polish (and that’s another story).  Our messes can involve the ugly mud of broken hearts and broken promises.  Our messes include things we wished we’d done and things we wished we hadn’t.  Just like the scars on my table won’t go away with Magic Eraser the scars our bad decisions leave won’t go away with a simple “sorry”.  

 

All of that mess sounds pretty rotten and the truth is simply that it is…And that is the exact reason we need a Savior.  We need a Savior to clean up the mess in our hearts and in our lives.  We need a Savior to make our scars beautiful.  We need a Savior to pick us up by our hearts and wash us whiter than snow.

 

So next time you’re picking up after the little messes in your life, take a moment and stop and think about the messes Christ has picked up for you.  Sure, teach your kids to be responsible (and not flood the bathroom) but when they get messy, reach down a hand, get messy with them and clean them up (without anger) and show them a little bit of what Christ does for you each and every day.