Shattered Glass…X2

*smash!*

As I worked to put clean sheets on our bed I heard the shattering of glass out in the kitchen.  My body reacted quickly as I leaped over the pile of pillows on the floor and hurdled my body through the door way and out into the living room….the dinning room…and into the kitchen.

There I found my 3-and-a-half-year-old son innocently standing in front of the sink.

“I’m done, Mommy!” He declared happily.

I peered into my white sink to see the remains of a small glass bowl shattered into hundreds of pieces.

I shuttered.  There is nothing I hate to clean up as much as shattered glass.  I would be a  happier mommy cleaning up vomit than the sharp chards of a bowl.  It all goes back to the time when I broke something glass and ended up with a piece of it in my foot.

Apparently Micah had wanted a bowl for the snack I had given him instead of using the napkin I had placed it on.  He was able to reach the small bowl that contained my morning vitamins, dump them into the garbage, and use the desired dish to eat his snack out of.  After he had finished he was a good boy and cleared his dish right into the sink.  The problem was the fact that he is too short to place it in the sink.  He’s only tall enough to half drop it, half throw it in.

I grabbed my hand-held vacuum out of the cleaning closet and sucked up the many glittering pieces of glass from within my kitchen sink.  And I was grateful that the sink had contained them all.  But in my hurry to get back on track after this 6.5-minute-delay in my schedule, I wrapped the cord around the vacuum and shoved it back in the closet.

Oh yes, I had thought about emptying the vacuum bag, but that’s as far as that idea went.  And so as the classic saying goes…“Out of sight, out of mind”.  Until about 2 nights later when I asked my 5-year-old Emily to get out the vacuum for me.

I meant the big vacuum, but again, in my must-accomplish-much-haste I didn’t specify which one and so she brought out the smaller one. 

*sigh* I can read their minds at times…shouldn’t kids be able to just know sometimes, too?!  Just kidding!  It was totally my own fault.

As I heard her work to get the vacuum I also heard the clink and clanking of glass in the vacuum hose.  At that moment I went into “mommy overdrive” as I declared a From-The-Trenches-Of-Motherhood-Household-State-Of-Emergency and ordered everyone to clear the hallway and stand still.

I quickly gathered up all my needed supplies – garbage can, new vacuum bag, etc… – and swept up the glass…again.  This time from the hallway closet.  And this time I did it right – changing the vacuum bag when I was done.

So many times I get frustrated at my children for not doing things right the first time, and yet this incident served as a reminder to me that I am really no different.  I’m just older and should know a whole lot better!

I get so caught up with doing and accomplishing that I sometimes let the “little” things slip.  In the long run I really don’t accomplish as much as I think I did.  I need to get back to the basics and do things the right way the first time.  But while I work on slowing down, and doing things to the best of my ability the first time, I praise God for His grace to do just that.  I am awed by God’s amazing love for me despite the shattered glass of my life.

From the trenches of motherhood…where God sweeps up my glass chards…

-Mandy the TrenchMommy