"Caution! Wet Floor!

For parents, there is never a dull moment!  Daily life is a maze with the unexpected looming around every corner!  There is no telling what the next 24 hours will bring.....or even what a quick trip into another room of the house will bring.  It's always an adventure.

Yesterday, Sam walked into the Living Room and found the kids making an 80's exercise video.  Complete with lace gloves and valley girl cues ("Like, now, totally do some knee bends!"). 

Case in point.

What I like about unexpected parenting moments is that they usually disguise a greater application.  If you look deeper, you might not just see the event taking place in front of you (Sweatin' to the Eighties) but an important life lesson for both you and your children (Team Work!).

Recently, Kate did something that really made us laugh but it also gave me something to think about.  She could be heard rattling around in the kitchen.  After a few minutes had passed, she called out, "HOW DO YOU SPELL THE WORD 'CAUTION'?"  Sam spelled it out for her and nothing else was said.

Later, when Sam walked into the kitchen, he found a spill on the floor and next to the spill was this sign:

Instead of cleaning up the spill, she found a piece of paper and made this "warning sign"!  In the time it took for her to create this sign, she could have cleaned up the spill and been well on her way to other things.  Sam and I got so tickled by her means of "fixing" the problem.....it was certainly creative and had "Kate" written all over it!

That night, I thought about the sign (which has now found itself among our collection of paper keepsakes) and it reminded me of how Christians often treat sin in their lives.  We seem pretty good at acknowledging our mistakes or our shortcomings; we may even call attention to them around others, but when it comes to "cleaning up the spill", we sometimes don't make the effort.  We leave signs next to our behaviors that say "Caution!  Sin!", but then we leave the mess there, getting stickier and stickier, putting us (and others in our lives) at risk for slipping.

When we have a "sin spill", we can purify our lives again through repentance and prayer.  We can't just be sorry about our sin, we have to commit to making a complete change in our behavior, which may require getting rid of negative influences that can lead us to sin.  Then we can protect ourselves from future "spills" by waxing our hearts with Bible words, because knowing what God wants you to do makes the clean-up somewhat easier.  As Christians, we never stop "spilling" but we CAN learn to become really great custodians!