Grace on a Thursday: Spills

This post is subtitled: The Mod Podge Sadness of 2011.

Your mother always said not to cry over spilt milk. But I'm pretty sure she knew that it is perfectly okay to cry over spilt Mod Podge. Especially when you discover the spill one hour after it happened. And when you discover it was spilled all over the pile of clean laundry. Someone small failed to mention the bottle launching out of the craft pantry and bursting onto the ground next to my mountain of clean linens.

Good thing the spill in the Gulf last year was oil and not Mod Podge. Those poor ducks were better off than my sheets. (You didn't think there was a silver lining in that oil spill cloud, did you?) Apparently when Mod Podge on sheets goes into the washer, it converts the substance to cement instead of washing it out like it would white glue. I'm actually considering myself lucky the stuff did not ruin my washer after seeing what the mess turned into after being washed and dried.

Also a big plastic box of beads launched out of the pantry, sending a zillion beads to all parts of the room. And mixing with the spilled Mod Podge sitting unattended on the stone floor of my dining area. It was an awesome sight to come home to after my trip to the grocery store. I'm gonna keep it short and say that I didn't handle it well.

The night o' spills (which was Monday) served to remind me that my plan is getting thwarted. My plans to have my house perfect, the laundry all caught up, and my family organized before school gets out...um...today at noon (!!!) aren't working out. And I'm etching this notion of things going awry into my head for summer itself.

I have big dreams and bigger expectations for summertime. Memory-making, special outings, time with grandparents and friends we rarely see, tons of art, tons of reading, some workbook study to keep our brains working, family vacations, and heaps of happiness are just some of my goals off the top of my head.

SO I NEED TO REMEMBER: SPILLS MAY HAPPEN. My plans may not work out. In fact, they probably all won't. I don't simply need to organize my craft supplies and beach bags to prepare for summertime. I need to stock my house with grace. I will need it handy to dole out to myself and my kids when things don't go as planned.

I can have my ideas, all five thousand of them swirling around in my head, for how my kids and I may want to spend our time. I just can't let my ideas become the only "right" way to spend it. And I'm not even saying that I want a full schedule. I totally do not. But sometimes even our plans for downtime don't work out. Sibling rivalry, or emergencies, or something else throws off our time of rest.

Today, I'm claiming grace on a Thursday for having a still disorganized house, still heaps of laundry, and still feeling ill-prepared for summer that is now basically here. Life skips along, whether or not I'm feeling prepared. I dont. At all. And I really need grace to feel OK about that. Spills and other interruptions happen, and I long to be a more flexible, gracious person when things don't go my way. But when I'm not, on the average day where I'm simply doing my best and even that doesn't seem to be good enough, I need grace to accept myself. My imperfect, inflexible, unprepared, overreactive, underslept, distracted self.

Because He accepts me, and loves me to pieces. Somehow that truth wipes away all my spilt-milk tears, and gives me the strength to stay standing.