Spills and Messes. A Changing Heart.

Here’s what I hate: sweeping up spills and messes.

First of all, on Thursday, I swept and mopped our entire downstairs.  That’s kitchen, dining room, living room, master bedroom, and study.  

This process involves stacking the kitchen chairs up on the table and removing rugs and random items from the floors so that I can quickly run my awesome Shark vacuum over everything.  Then, I slowly steam mop all the floors in all the rooms. 

Once it’s finished, a person could probably lick my floors, they are so stinkin’ clean! 

Usually, when I’ve cleaned the floors, I am hyper aware of my dirty feet and daughters who drop crumbs and spill juice on my newly sparkling floors.  Dinner is never that fun on the night I’ve just mopped because I am like a drill sergeant when it comes to dropped food and potential spills from my family.

However, on this particular Thursday, I was the one who spilled something…

Before I tell you about that, I have to tell you about the-cat-that-is-not-our-cat. 

She (he?) is an adorable black and white cat that showed up last winter with meows so pitiful, we had to feed it.  So, of course it came back.  This stray cat is clean and sweet and lovely.  We tried to find out if perhaps it had an owner, but the cat kept coming around and no one knew if it belonged to anyone.  Sooo, we named it.

Mittens.

Bill is 99% allergic to cats and so I declared to the girls that the cat should never come inside.  This rule was soon broken during the first rainstorm when we let the poor, soggy cat eat her food in the kitchen. 

All that to say: that the cat sometimes eats in the house…much to my dismay.

So, back to Thursday when my floors were super-shiny-clean after I spent all afternoon mopping them.  It was early evening and I noticed the cat’s food outside on our deck.  I like to put her food bowl away before the opossum comes and steals the cat’s food.  So, I opened the door, reached out for the food bowl and stepped back in the house.

Something moved on the top of the food.

I looked down and saw a giant stick-bug trying hard to blend in and look like cat food rather than a stick. 

I dropped-slash-threw the bowl of cat food, stick-bug and all straight down onto the newly mopped floors.

Cat food was everywhere.  EH-VER-EE-where!

After I chased down the stick-bug and threw him back out onto the deck (you can’t kill a cool bug like that), I began sweeping up far-flung cat food.

It was not fun.

But, it was a little bit funny.

Then…

Today, I was in my bathroom leaning in close to the mirror over the sink as I finished putting on my mascara.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed movement in the mirror.

Up above and behind me, something was about to fall.

It fell in slow motion, like in a movie.  Who knows what made it fall.

It was the glass, dome shaped light covering of the bathroom ceiling lightbulbs.

Down it came, crashing on the tile into a gazillion shards of milky white glass. 

The girls came running in to see what made the horrible crash. 

I of course told them to stay back so that they didn’t impail themselves on a shard of glass. 

They stood back and watched me tiptoe through the minefield of brokenness to grab some shoes.

And there I was: 30 minutes until we had to be at Lexi’s soccer game, standing in the bathroom wearing rain boots with my nightgown so that I could sweep up the glass.

So, there you have it.  The two stories of messes I had to clean up this week.  Things like that are never fun.  They always happen at the worst times.  (Like when you’ve just cleaned the floors or when you are late for soccer.)

But, there was something unusual about these particular occurrences: My attitude.

I laughed at the spilled cat food and the stick bug.

And I calmly did the tedious clean-up of the broken light cover.

Laughing at spills (on my newly mopped floor!) and being calm during something like a light fixture breaking EVERYWHERE is not like me.

Yelling is more like me.

Panicking about being late for soccer is more like me.

Screeching and huffing and cursing and crying is more like me.

What does it mean? 

Here’s what I love:  Something is changing my heart.

As I walk with Jesus, I can tell that the Holy Spirit is working within me.  Why else would I be able to remain so serene in these scenarios!?  I’m not drugged or delusional.  I’m simply a living, breathing example of God at work in me.  God promised that when He began a good work in me, He would also be the one to complete it. 

I marvel at the thought of that girl in the rain boots sweeping up glass.  I still giggle at the thought of that cat food scattered everywhere. 

Calmly cleaning up.  Giggling at messes.  These must be the tenth and eleventh fruits of the spirit. 

I’m so thankful for God’s work in me.  I’m starting to believe that when I offer my heart to Him, He will miraculously (sometimes slowly) change a panicked yeller to a giggling cleaner. 

So, give Him your heart. Come on, you know you want to be a giggler too!

1 Peter 1:3-9 (The Message)

^3-4 Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received! We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.

^5-9 So don’t lose a minute in building on what you’ve been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding, alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder, warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others. With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus. Without these qualities you can’t see what’s right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.