Lessons in Broken Glass

I told myself when I became a mom that I would not become a "mommy blogger." I love to read mommy blogs....sometimes (other times I come away wondering why I can't be organized enough to plan my family's meals 30 days in advance and make eco-friendly laundry detergent that won't give my family all kinds of unspeakable diseases or travel across the world 13 days after giving birth. Guilt, guilt, guilt. The lesson here: read mommy blogs carefully). But I also haven't been writing lately, and my loving husband reminds me that I need to do that. We had a conversation about it this morning:

Ben (to Elijah): "Mommy is a songwriter."
Me: "I used to be."
Ben: (such a patient encourager) "She still could be. We talked about that, Honey. It's been a long time. Imagine if you were writing music NOW."
Me: (self-loathing...I'm working on this) "They would still be bad songs."
Ben: "Oh....right. Ok."
Elijah: "Ooooo, blahma?" (looks at us like we are clinically insane)

So for some reason over the past two years since I wrote my last blog post (really?) I have embraced the idea that I'm not really a good writer, of anything. Although that is neither here nor there at this point, I am writing again because a recent situation demanded it. It was one of those happenings that was laced with parallels to my life and my heart that lays deaf to truth sometimes. I guess this time it took a whole lot of broken glass to make me realize it.

I'm a mess-maker. The other week my mom and I were swapping epic mess stories on the phone, trying to beat each other out for the craziest messes we've ever cleaned up: broken glass pitcher of sweet tea in the fridge, exploded casserole dish that had been set on a hot stove eye, entire pitcher of spilled red coolaid on the kitchen floor...the list went on and on. She took the prize with an entire crockpot full of chili spilled in the car. Twice. But she's got 26 years on me. It took about 23 years for me to admit without shame that I can clumsy, but it's just a fact of my life and I'm no longer ashamed of it. I spend a lot of time cleaning up after messes that I made myself. (This is not a good problem for a mommy to have, diapers and drool and spit-up and mashed banana are enough mess themselves). My husband's family nicknamed him "Messer Uh-Oh" from the time he was a baby and didn't stop calling him that UNTIL I JOINED THE FAMILY. You get the idea. I generally don't get upset when things spill and break, because I know first-hand how horrible it feels when you accidentally make a mess and someone gets irrationally upset at you (no, it was not my mom and dad. They have always been incredibly patient with their clumsy girl). I decided early on that I would not do this to my kids.

This time it was nobody's fault. There was a vase, a heavy red-frosted glass vase, on top of my fridge. (What crazy person puts glass on top of their fridge I wish I didn't know). It must have been inching toward the edge very gradually, because nobody knocked it, nobody opened the fridge door, it just fell. We were all in the kitchen: Ben, me, Elijah. When this vase fell it hit the granite countertop first. And smashed into a billion trillion pieces. Not kidding. My sweet baby was playing on the floor not 2 feet away from where this explosion occurred. There was glass on the floor all around him, big pieces a foot away from him, smaller pieces even closer and shards on the other side of him, clear into the living room. The miraculous part is that there was not A.SINGLE.PIECE. anywhere on my baby. Not on his skin, head, clothes, inside or onto of his prosthetic helmet that he wears, NOWHERE. It was like a shield went up around him when the vase broke. Don't believe in God? Don't believe in miracles? Fine with me, but this was unexplainable. I think that I'm so in control - I plan Elijah's playtimes, I plan his meals, he eats and sleeps on a (loosely interpreted) schedule, I know when he is hungry and tired and sick and sad...but when unexpected things like this happen, I remember: I am not in control. And that is such a good thing. If it had been up to me to protect E from that vase breaking, he would have been COVERED.IN.GLASS. Praise God for his mercy and his power that overrides our reason and logic and false sense of control. How many times has He saved us from other perils without our awareness?

So anyway, although I know now that Elijah was unharmed I did not know that 2 seconds after the crash, so I did what any sane mommy would do. I screamed "My baby!", scooped him up, and turned him upside-down and inside-out to check for the slightest scratch. Meanwhile, a nice little pool of blood was collecting on the floor from my foot where a vase piece had hit me, but we dealt with that later. Important thing was under control: Elijah was unscarred, physically. Psychologically he seemed a bit perplexed because he had never heard Mommy scream before. He kept looking at me with a bewildered look on his face, even as I took him in the shower to rinse off any glass dust. I reassured and cuddled and kissed, but it took a few minutes for the shock of it all to wear off for him (poor babies, what must be going through their heads when they witness these things, especially for the first time ever. Talk about sensory overload. We don't let our baby look at screens of any kind, but a few seconds of crashing, hysterical mommy, and getting turned upside down and scrutinized all over puts all that effort to not overstimulate their brains out the window).

It took us a good 3 hours of sweeping, dusting, vacuuming, mopping, and washing to get the house to a point of satisfactory cleanliness. That term takes on a whole new meaning when you have an almost 8-month-old who is crawling on his BELLY all over your hours and putting his mouth on anything and everything he can find. While we cleaned, Elijah sat in the jumper in the doorway crying because HE WANTED TO GET DOWN AND PLAY (really!?) until an unfortunate incident in which the vacuum cleaner bag blew its contents all over the place where E was playing (I said we're good at making messes, right? Did I mention we're also good at making big messes BIGGER?) banished him to the pack-n-play. (Pack-n-plays to 8-month-old boys might as well be jail)

In the midst of all the consultation over what needed to be cleaned, what did you clean already, should we vacuum this area again because I carried through a load of laundry that may or may not have been exposed to glass dust but probably everything in this house was exposed to glass dust (oh, did I also mention that I am self-diagnosed OCD and my husband is a germophobe?), my sweet baby boy continued to weep because he wanted to crawl. On the floor. Where there were hazardous particles that would endanger him. But he couldn't see them. He doesn't yet know what glass IS. All he knew is that he wanted to get OUT.OF.BABY.JAIL. and Mommy and Daddy wouldn't help him. So he cried. He cried huge crocodile tears and gave us his most pitiful looks. It made me want to cry, and the harder he begged the worse I felt, but I was not about to let him have what he wanted. Why? Because I knew what he didn't know. I knew that giving him what he wanted was going to hurt him, not satisfy his needs or make him happy. As I stood there listening to Elijah beg for freedom and washing glass-coated cookware in the kitchen sink, I felt a strong nudge from my spirit - God prompting me to think about all the times I asked him for something that He did not give and I accused Him of being unloving, unfeeling, unaware of my needs. Was I not being just as foolish as my innocent little boy who only saw his desires and not the consequences of having those desires met? (Let me clarify before I go on, I expect nothing more of my baby than exactly what he did. He's not even 8 months old. He doesn't know any better. This is an object lesson, not a weird, twisted opinion essay on why babies shouldn't cry when they want things, because THEY SHOULD. Ok.). It also made me stop and think that maybe if God had allowed those things - that failed relationship, that missed opportunity, that job that never called me back, that ministry opportunity that was going to do such great things for my faith - I would have experienced unnecessary pain or temptation or encountered situations I was not prepared for.

I guess the big picture here is that God KNOWS THINGS that I don't and that is a good thing. If I knew not just the things I was headed for but also the things I was avoiding, my little heart would not be able to handle it. I would be a nervous wreck. "You mean that man that I just passed on the street was planning to assault me?!? But you stopped him, God?!? What??? Ok, breathe, it's ok." (you get the idea) The longer I parent the more I realize that deep inside I am JUST LIKE A BABY - naïve, completely dependent, unaware of so much that is going on around me, and 100% reliant on someone who is more powerful and stronger than me. Lucky for me my "stronger than me" is actually the Strongest there is, and Elijah will have to learn some day that his parents are just people and God is who he really needs. But I am so thankful for moments and situations that remind me that I am not safe, I am not secure, and neither is my family, unless I find that in God. I can't manipulate my circumstances to make sure that my child never ever gets hurt or injured or distressed (although I will do everything with my limited power and resources to do that) but we have a God who the psalmist describes as a Rock, a Shelter, a Fortress, a Hiding Place from the hard times. This is the God whom I serve. And this is the God I want to show to my son. Even if it takes a houseful of broken glass for me to see it.