Grace

If you're anything like me, grace seems like an abstract, impossible notion to effectively give in the realm of parenting. I mean, what does that look like? We have to walk this complicated, intricate balance of how to pour out grace on our children, all the while maintaining a lesson of life: there are consequences for your actions.

I don't by any means, claim to have the "know-how" when it comes to parenting. I'm just like everyone else, doing the best that I can. That being said, I feel like today my heart had a little lightbulb moment when it comes to grace.

My daughter asked me if she could make dinner. She has been reading a book about meals that people eat in different countries and asked if she could try one of them. There was an easy smoothie recipe (that supposedly hails from Australia), and she asked if that could be our dinner. I said sure! and we proceeded to make the smoothies together. We washed and cut up apples, mango, bananas, limes, and threw in some blueberries for good measure. Lolli was tasked with getting the blender out (yes, I'm one of "those people" who store the small appliances they don't routinely use in a cupboard). She started to move it to the counter and dropped it. Then she picked it up and dropped it again (maybe she wasn't certain if it broke on the first drop? hehe). Slippery fingers? I'm not certain. I was busy cutting up apples.

Let me allow you to glimpse into the mind of mothers. We are constantly cleaning up messes. Our things are dropped, broken, spilled on, stained, destroyed. It's almost like children see something that parents love and they immediately have a robot-like need to destroy it. Because of this, mother's don't always handle broken things with grace. Sure, there are those freak-of-nature-June-Cleavers (who I am convinced are really sociopaths, hence their ability to show no angry emotions when their children destroy things) that say all of the perfect things, but for the majority of Mom's in the world the response is generally something like: WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?!?!?! AAAAHHHH! YOU DROPPED IT! IT'S BROKEN! YOU DON'T HAVE ANY SHOES! SOMEBODY GET ME SOME SHOES!!!! AND THE BROOM! And then we proceed to angrily, frustratedly, perhaps silently (but usually this is that scary angry mom silence...), clean up the mess that our children have made.

On this day, I did not overreact. I said Is it broken? She said I don't think so. Dad investigated and it was. So I said Maybe Daddy will go to Walmart and get a new one and then we can finish making our smoothies. Grace. Grace poured out. And maybe that's what parental grace is supposed to be. It's not "letting it slide in grace" when our children behave like criminals (and let's be honest, children really basically behave like criminals almost daily: violence-hitting, biting, scratching, stealing-grabbing whatever toy they want when they want it, lying under oath-if I have to explain this one to you then you clearly do NOT have children, and on and on), but rather giving grace when the accidents come. Maybe grace is having the self control to recognize the things out of our children's control, and not behaving in a life-long-emotionally-detrimental way. Maybe grace looks like going to Walmart to get a new blender. Maybe grace is not being pissed when they spill (and mash) blueberries into your brand new couch. Maybe it's allowing them the freedom to destroy, fall apart, and then being the platform from which they can put things back together again.

So today I had a glimpse into how grace should show up in my home a whole lot more.