Undone

A house with small children is an active house.  In fact, every item in it seems to be unfixed or to come undone.  I cannot tell you where that hairbrush went, because there are eight little hands, or knees or legs which could have absconded it at any given moment and they put it...?  Only God knows where!  I've given up looking for things, because I know I'll eventually come across them in places I never could imagine looking...inside that shoe or toy, trapped in a box and hidden under the bed because it was a puppy waiting for her mommy, or with the bath toys.  I can't think like them.

Fortunately, my littles are getting bigger and so, oftentimes, they're able to bring that missing thing back to me and to explain to me why it was where ever it was!  Like yesterday morning, I was missing my phone, and of course, it was on silent.  I asked the kids about it and one child explained to me matter-of-factly that another child was her horsey and my phone frightened her.  So she hid my phone in their bedroom closet in order to protect her horsey from fear.  A valid, valid explanation.  And....I'm really glad she could tell me the story, because why would I look in their closet?

Then there's the epic time when I was putting lotion on in the park - the one time I took off my wedding ring and carefully placed it in front of me on the picnic blanket.  It must have been the most covert of operations because I didn't hear or feel the little dear slink up to me...not a bit.  Or I'm so used to their noise, and I never imagined my own flesh and blood might take it...I don't really know.  But I finished lotioning my hands (how long does that take - a minute??), grabbed for my ring...gone!  

I looked left, right, everywhere.  My heart in my throat, I glanced around in panic.  A park-full of kids, but no one looking suspicious.  I called my own over.  

"Have you seen my wedding ring?  I had it right here in front of me!"

"Oh, Mommy!  Yes!  We're playing pirates!  We needed treasure.  I buried it over there somewhere in the sand."

Don't these kids have any notion of personal property...or manners?  Haven't I taught them again and again to ask permission before taking something of someones?  Aaaagh!

"In the sand?" as I scan 200 square feet of sand and 25ish children running across it, "Where, exactly, in the sand?"

"Oh...somewhere over there."

The child walks me to the general location.  I say a prayer as I consider employing all of those 25ish children to help me dig if I don't find it soon.

Fortunately, after only a couple minutes of sand digging, we unbury that treasure, my irreplaceable wedding ring, and I breathe a prayer of thanksgiving as I vow to let my hands crack in half rather than moisturize in public again.

These are just two examples of a whole plethora of similar happenings in my life throughout the past 10 1/2 years.  All of my formerly static objects have legs, or if they don't walk away from where I put them, I find them disassembled and scattered about (the work of my insatiably-curious future engineer).  And, usually, nobody did it.  I have to pry it out of them.

Honest moment here:  It makes me feel batty.

It's an anger point for me that I'm actively working on.

So, yesterday, again - after the phone/horsey incident - I walk into my bathroom to put on my necklace, rings and earrings which I'd ceremoniously left in a pile inside a wooden bracelet, only to discover things scattered, and the back missing from one of my earrings.  My brand-new earrings which I'd only worn once - defiled and lost!

I just want to wake up in the morning and have my things not be moved or touched or tampered with.  I DON'T want to have to crawl around the floor looking for my missing earring back.  I DON'T want to have to take the time to investigate this new offense.  I CAN'T put everything out of reach anymore, because they all can reach everything...or if they can't, they monkey their way there.  I JUST want them to START listening and obeying and putting into practice what I've taught them!  If you drop it, find it!  Ask before you touch.  Please....show some respect for the sake of your mother's sanity!!!!

A scan across the tiles gives me nothing.

And so I start the dirty business of interrogating the locals.  I cut right to the chase.

"Who was messing with my earrings?  An earring back is missing.  My jewelry was in a pile, now it's scattered around and a back is missing.  They don't work without the back!  So, who was it?"

Silence.

Of course.  No one.

Yes.  I know.

So I take the most likely suspect and escort him to my bathroom.  I am really, really tired of this baloney.  I move to direct assault tactic.

"You did it, didn't you?"

"No, Mommy...I didn't."

"I'm sorry.  I don't believe you.  You've not always told me the truth.  I think you did it."

He stands there, fingering the said earring and considering.

"Well, maybe...." he starts to mumble something incoherent, a confession, in my mind.

Ummm hmmmm.  The truth comes out.

"Ok.  I want you to find that earring back, bud.  You need to stop messing with things that aren't yours!"

Head down, he agrees.

But I don't make him look for it just then.  After school will work.

We move forward with the day, uneventfully.

An hour, maybe two, later, I'm in the kitchen.  As I'm clearing the counter, what do I find?  The infamous earring back.

Why in the world would they bring it to the kitch....

I pause in my thoughts.  Disaster.  They didn't do it.  He didn't do it:  that little, fingering, head-hanging, sin-confessing boy.  He didn't do it.

"In your anger do not sin..." Ephesians 4:26

I did it.  It was me.  A plastic piece had broken off the earring back and I'd brought it to the kitchen as I was talking to James and putting it back together.  And I'd walked away and left it there and forgotten it.  And in the morning, I'd seen my own disarray and angered at the kids.

I accused them all and didn't believe them.  This time, they were innocent.

I was guilty.

But I couldn't see my own guilt.  Didn't remember it.  I was so blinded by my own idea of their guilt, again.  So willing to mete out justice expediently.

And so I didn't believe them, didn't trust them, like Marilla in Anne of Green Gables with her missing broach.  Anne confessed her guilt because Marilla wouldn't believe the truth.

Sure, these kids of mine have a track record.  They're kids!  Kids do these things!

But my job, my job, is not to sin in my anger.  My job is to train them in righteousness (2 Tim 3:16) and to speak the truth in love (Eph 4:15).  My job is to show them grace and love.

And so, I show grace to myself as well.  We all fall flat sometimes.  Jesus loves me, little sinner, as much as he loves those little sinners.  It's true.

Father God, may I lean on you more and more as I walk this sometimes harrowing path of motherhood.  May I, like Solomon, ask for wisdom in a task that feels too big, too hard, for me.  Help me to be in your word every day.  I need you, God, in this!