fingerprints on the Glass

Did you have any feet to wash yesterday? I did. It all started yesterday morning with what seemed thousands of loads of laundry. As you know, that resulted in thousands of pieces of clothing to fold. SO, my morning was occupied washing, folding, and putting clothes away. Which, by process of elimination means the kiddos were on the loose. They ran the morning rotation: playroom playing (they DESTROYED the room!!!!!! That is an understatement), breakfast, outside playing(I did take a break from washing in order to pitch the baseball), riding bikes(this is where things go off kilter). I was folding clothes in the family room as the two older boys were bike riding in the driveway. I looked out the windows in the front of the house and see Benjamin running. That's not bike riding. Hmmm, I go outside to check on them and find Luke telling me it's just a science experiment. That is what it looked for sure, an experiment gone bad. The two of them were filthy. They had been playing with the water hose and then made a mud puddle for Box(the tree frog that hangs out behind the hanging basket on the front door). Those two boys had strewn toys all over the yard. So now there is a HUGE mess in the playroom and outside. Not to mention, I had a Dr. appt. that required the boys to be dispersed to different homes. Now I had to wash them off before they could come inside for their lunch. This led me to wash Luke's feet. As I was bending over washing his sweet little toddler feet, I thought, how crazy is this. I actually blogged about this and now I am literally washing my son's feet. I thought about what I was doing and why I needed to wash his feet. He was just being a boy. Loving life and making a big 'ol mess as he made his way through his morning. I was still frustrated about the way our house was looking. That could be fixed, but the way I responded to Luke was the important issue. I had already let them have it for the playroom "situation," so I tried to offer him gentle words. He wanted to be sure I knew where his boo boos were and I carefully wiped around them. It wasn't until I visited with a wise friend of mine last night that something came to me. She mentioned a situation where a mom kept running her child off as she worked on her hobby. The poor child got frustrated and destructively got his mama's attention. It hit home with me and I thought about that foot washing that took place on my kitchen floor. It was symbolic of so much more than getting grass and mud off of those chubby little feet. I came away with a great lesson. Certainly mud puddles for Box are important and more importantly are those tender little spirits that have to be trained. That comes from our attention, correction, discipline, and focus along with a good, gentle foot washing.