Close Call

Can I tell you about one of my greatest disappointments of my adult life? BATH TIME. When I was younger, bath time was a sacred sanctuary of escape. I knew as I got older that this would not be a commodity so easy to come by, as kids would make bath time more difficult. But I had dreams of sweet bath time with bubbles and rubber duckies and precious memories.

Flash forward. FANTASY RUINED.

Bath time for the turkeys… I escape looking like I have lived in a war zone. Drenched in water with hair askew. Yelling, “Just COME put your PJs on!!” Not quite the rubber ducky laden dreams I had built myself up to experience.

And bath time for me? HA. Most nights, bath time is a chore rather than an escape. After being at war in a flash flood zone with two giggling banshees, I am left with only moments of mustering the courage to just wash my darn hair and get on with my life. The agony.

Don’t act like I am alone. I know you hear me.

And so, one day, I was left with the fateful decision to take a quick bath before going out with the kiddies. They had been bathed and were sitting on my bedroom floor watching a movie. With the door open (Spoiler Alert: Parents never get to close doors… It is not a thing. You may as well take them all off of the hinges. Forget you ever lived in the solace of privacy. The littles will invade your every inch and question you to kingdom come. Oh you didn’t know that? You’re welcome.), I could hear them playing and giggling and “watching” a movie. And then… I heard a loud crash. Exactly what every mother wants to hear. Small whimpers. No screams. Okay, so that’s good. I got out to assess the tragedy and emerged to find that my oldest had knocked over a standing mirror (about 6 feet tall) onto him. Imagine my terror, and also my relief, because I realized that somehow– by some great miracle– the mirror had not broken. How does a mirror that large fall crashing to the ground and not break? It could only have been the Lord.

And so, I explained to him the danger of playing by the mirror, what could have happened if the mirror had broken and attempted to reiterate what could have been the consequences of his actions.

Later, as I recalled with amazement that the mirror somehow stayed in tact, despite my son’s best efforts to the contrary, something stuck out to me.

Sometimes, we make really dumb decisions. We do things we never should have done. We play in places we never should have gone. And sometimes, we have to deal with the consequences of those actions. But sometimes, God– in His infinite mercy– allows us to only get a glimpse of what our consequences could have been. He keeps our situation in tact, and uses our “close call” as a learning experience.

Let us not be so foolish as to ignore the lesson. Let us pay attention to mercy that spared us from the expense we should have paid. Let us use these types of experiences in which we show our immaturity to develop maturity in our lives. Don’t neglect the learning opportunity of a close call…