My dear boy, now a smidge over one year, has been testing his strength lately.  Hoisting the 12-pack of Charmin’ and dragging the laundry basket around the living room have become his favorite pastimes lately.

The tub that holds my  flour, approximately 7 pounds at any given time, was perched on Tripp’s tiny white table in the kitchen.  Typically a perfect place for drumming with a spatula or spoon Tripp decided he wanted to attempt to lift the large tub and place it on the floor.

Weighing almost a third of what my little guy does he quickly realized he couldn’t safely set it down and dropped it on the floor in such a way that the plastic cracked in half.

Flour poured everywhere, covering a good portion of the kitchen floor.  I yelped, hoping Tripp was unharmed and quickly realized he was fine and was seizing the opportunity to play in a new texture and substance.  My OCD was flaring slightly but I managed to grab the camera for a few shots of my flour-covered baby.

He looked up at me in partial guilt, waiting to hear me yell, “NO!” But as I saw his flour-coated fuzzy slippers and his tiny fingertips covered in the soft white powder I was filled with God’s grace.   I smiled, ran to get his Daddy who needed to share in this moment with us and pushed my anxiety aside.

His glee at this new found discovery was enough to keep me from losing it.  The smile on his little face made this huge mess worth a few minutes of cleaning afterwards.

How many times have we been sitting on the kitchen floor, in the middle of a huge mess, knowing we can’t clean it up ourselves.  How many time does God pour down His grace on us when we need help cleaning up these messes?  God doesn’t bat an eyelid or grumble about how he’ll have to mop the floor for the umpteenth time.  He just bends down, dusts off our fuzzy slippers and tells us to try again.