Lessons from a mess

In my "Motherhood Day" post, I promised you the rest of this story (to be read in your best Paul Harvey voice), so here goes. 

As I wrote before, Mother's Day morning started with our 6-year old bursting into our room and announcing urgently:

"You GUYS. Something happened. You GOTTA come see this."

I knew it had to be something puppy-related (we'd been letting her sleep outside of her crate at night, thinking she was ready), so I reluctantly rolled out of bed and grabbed my robe. Heading down the hall, I saw instantly what caused the announcement. Several brown piles down the hallway told the story of a puppy who tried to hold it and then couldn't, then panicked and tried to hold it some more and couldn't. Yyyyeah, it was bad.

I walked past the piles and headed down the stairs to make a decision. 

a) Do I just leave it and let Chris take care of it when he gets up? It's Mother's Day, after all...
b) Do I roll up my pink robe sleeves and just get it done?
c) What if I ignore it and hope it just goes away?

I almost picked option a, then wished for option c... and then I remembered that I'm a grown-up, and decided I could handle it even though I reeeally didn't want to. 

I got the girls to help grab all of the cleaning supplies, found some strong mint gum to chew on so I could block the smell as much as possible, then mustered the courage to head back up the stairs. 

I started with the smallest bits, then worked my way to the 2 main piles (I know. This is disgusting. I promise it's almost over). It took quite a while, but eventually we got through all of it. 

The silver lining is that, while I was scrubbing (and trying not to gag), some valuable life lessons came to mind:

1. Progress, even small, creates momentum. 
   Cleaning it up was difficult, but do-able. It looked a lot worse than it actually ended up being once I rolled up my sleeves and attacked the problem one bit at a time, starting with the smallest, easiest parts. Cleaning one small spot gave me motivation to move to the next and then the next, just like a video game where you work your way up to conquer the "boss". 
2. Blame isn't helpful. 
   It really wasn't the puppy's fault. We chose to take the risk of leaving her out, to see what she was ready for. The mess showed us that she needs more time/boundaries, and that's okay. It doesn't mean she's a bad dog, or that we're bad owners. Seeing this clearly helped me focus on the resolution, rather than where to put the blame.
   
3. Extra suffering isn't required. 
   The strong mint gum actually helped a lot (I had learned this trick during my pregnancies, when smells made me feel extra nauseous). Just because a mess happened, didn't mean I had to endure the suffering of smelling it. Yes, it was disgusting. But there were things I could do to get through it as easily as possible. The strong mint gum helped block my nose from having to smell it fully. When we're going through something hard, we don't get bonus points for suffering extra.
4. Love is unconditional
   Our puppy's value and how much we love her didn't change just because she made a mess. If we can feel this way about a puppy, think of how much more God feels about us -- regardless of how many times we mess up. 
5. It didn't ruin my Mother's Day.
   Starting what was supposed to be a fantastic day off like that could have really put a damper on everything else if I had kept a "woe is me" attitude. I had fallen into that trap before, so I knew I didn't want to go there. Instead, I decided to laugh about it with our girls and move on. The rest of the day was absolutely beautiful. 

Life happens. Piles of crap in the hall on Mother's Day happen. We can choose to accept reality and move through it, then let it go. That's what God wants for us, and that's what leads to the joy we all deserve. 

(Here's a photo the girls snapped of me, feeling victorious after it was finally all cleaned up)