While visiting Linnea and family in Florida, it’s been fun renewing relationships with 3 year old Skylar and 2 year old Micah. Little Autumn, 2 months this week, has changed significantly since I saw her last, which was her birth week.
Children are fantastic, but they can also cause lots of trouble. They’re labor-intensive, expensive, loud, and worst of all, they create endless messes. Autumn, for example, spits-up on shoulders and makes deposits in her diapers. But those messes are small-potatoes compared to her older siblings. Skylar and Micah? They’re in the mess-making big leagues.
Those two can dismantle a room in just a few minutes of creative play. They can also “help” an adult with a 5 minute project that later requires 40 minutes of clean-up. Making messes comes easily. Cleaning up is more like combat.
And then there are us adults. Even the big-league messes preschool kids make are nothing compared to the disastrous ones we get ourselves into with people. They begin slowly and aren’t usually visible to others, but months or years down the road, everyone sees.
Children make messes with sticky fingerprints, but we do something far worse when we let relationships get sticky. And just as children hate to clean up the messes they make, we find it difficult to tidy up our relationships. Picking up the pieces and putting them back together is something we don’t usually want to do, but if we let disheveled relationships go too far, the clean-up becomes twice as hard.
God describes himself as our heavenly Father, our parent, someone who urges us to make things right just like we urge Skylar and Micah to put a messy room back in order. We insist the children get it done, just as our Father pressures us until we do what we know is the right thing.
Today Skylar, Micah and I made a morning project of reorganizing all their plastic bins, putting each plaything back in its proper place. We retrieved puzzle pieces from the garage and plastic people from the yard. Books had been tucked in the play kitchen and necklaces under the couch. The orderly result was children enjoying a sense of accomplishment and fresh enthusiasm for rediscovered toys.
If we keep our relationships in order, the same thing will be true for us… especially if the relationship we’re working on is the one we have with God.
“Now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God.” (Romans 5:11)
Great minds think alike! That was a project and game that I played with those two when I would babysit at their house. It was like given them new toys all over again and keeping them occupied for long periods of time. Don’t need to say “enjoy” for I’m sure your heart is overflowing with the joy of interacting with those precious gifts from God.
If only relational messes were as easy to spot and sort as toys. (Although is sounds like you had to do some searching to identify all of yours!) Too often we bury our hurts and feelings so deeply that we can never identify them or sort them out. We just continue to feel and act on them. Good words, Margaret. Thanks.
Boy I needed this today. I really messed up yesterday with a co-worker and ask for your prayers today. This entry also hits at the heart of my own home. My relationship with my sister is non-existant and I don’t even know the first step to resolving issues that go back 30 years. Forgiveness is one thing, forgetting the scars is quite another.
The idea of freshness and newness is always great, and so with that in mind, put toys away. Bring out one “new” container each Sunday. With 4 different containers rotating, the kids are usually not overwhelmed with clean-up time. Variety is the spice of life, even for little ones. Works great, and calms nerves, too. Works with clothes, as well. Not so much laundry.
You should have taken a photo of the “after”. Their room has never looked better! =)