It started back when we were selling the house and would get last minute showings when the house was always at its dirtiest. Perhaps I used, “Mommy’s a little stressed out right now,” one too many times to excuse poor parenting and bad temper flares, but it has led to Mary regularly praying, “And please don’t let Mommy be too stressed out today.” I’m not sure if she is really concerned about my stress or if she just knows that it’s not to her benefit when Mommy is stressed and cranky. Either way, she prays it so often that I started having a guilt complex.
At lunch today, when she thanked God for our food and requested of Him that Mommy not be too “stessdid out,” I thought to myself, “I’m not stressed at all! I’ve got everything under control today.” It was an entirely unneeded prayer. After all, the day was ahead of schedule and any plans that I had were not fully necessary ones so I could abandon ship at any point. The house was relatively clean and I was looking forward to some relaxation this evening with some fun plans in store. No stress here! Take that prayer request for someone who truly needs it, because I’ve got things under control here, God.
The girls began eating their lunch and I was sitting for the first extended period this morning, reading an article. It started quietly enough, but I could tell Mary was instructing Colette on something that would soon escalate into a fight. Apparently Colette was pushing two 1/2 inch pieces of abandoned string from some project into Mary’s territory. Maybe Mary had already sent them Colette’s way; I’m not sure, but for whatever childish reason, it was causing them both angst to have the strings close to their plates. I told the girls to leave the strings alone and to not talk about them anymore. “Just eat your lunch,” I commanded. It’s a simple enough request, isn’t it?
But no. Apparently there was some danger or threat or contagion exemplified in these strings and all methods of territorial protections were being taken, including heavy breathing so as to blow the strings away. Mary, pretending to be non-chalantly resting her hand on the table, cupped her hand over the strings. I’m not sure why this made her feel secure since the battle seemed all about getting as far away from the strings as possible (without, of course, doing something reasonable like taking them to the trash or changing seats) and now her skin was a mere centimeter away from coming into contact with that which she so greatly feared. Her older and wiser sister saw the vulnerable position she had put herself in and took full advantage by placing her hand atop Mary’s and then pressing downward. This sent Mary into a flurry of tears and Colette assumed full innocence complete with wide eyes and the perplexed look that says, “I have no idea what her problem is!”
I lost it. I mean, I really lost it. Scary Mommy style; like neck veins bulging and eyes popping and teeth gritting. It bubbled up out of me out of nowhere with no excuse of being tired or cranky or stressed, but just that I was blown away by the stupidity of the entire argument. I screamed about how stupid they were both behaving and we don’t use that word so they jolted as I repeated it and told them it was warranted because that was exactly how they were acting. I begged for understanding of what threat the strings posed without waiting for explanations. I stomped my foot and demanded that the strings be immediately disposed of and threatened that if I heard one more sniffle or huff or argument regarding the TWO STUPID STRINGS that I would send them to individual rooms where they would spend the rest of their afternoon leaving me alone. And then I gasped for breath after my tirade and called lunch to an end while the children scattered with their tails between their legs, leaving me to feel lousy as could be.
I sat on the floor in the corner of my kitchen contemplating how I allowed myself to completely lose my cool like that when I really wasn’t in my usual vulnerable states that lead to lost temper- hungry, tired, stressed, cranky. Everything had been going so well today. I had spent the morning cleaning and was feeling rather accomplished, but as I sat on the floor that had been mopped only an hour before I got a close-up view of the grime that had been missed. I thought the floor was clean, but it really wasn’t clean at all. There were crumbs wedged in corners, and fresh ones from lunch, and sticky spots that had just streaked from mopping instead of being removed. From this point of view, up close, it didn’t really look clean at all and I had been feeling pretty good about the work that I had done just a little bit ago.
Are you making the connection I did or should I paint it a little clearer for you? I felt an awful lot like that floor in that moment of self-loathing. From a distance, I can put on a pretty good appearance of being squeaky clean but when you get up close and personal, the view is really quite gross. Oh, I do my regular housekeeping- church attendance; Check!, Bible study; Check!, Prayer; Check!, but sometimes… a lot of the times… it’s like the mop-job I did that morning, just wiping over a surface that’s hiding lots of buildup and needs a hands and knees kind of clean.
So this is my hands and knees kind of clean. It’s not an easy job to expose to you how easily I am angered and how quickly that sin comes to surface, but I can’t be cleansed without exposing the dirt and grime crammed in the corners and hiding in the dark places. It’s these moments when I think I’ve got it all under control on my own, not in need of the prayer, that sin leaps to the surface. I am a whitewashed tomb as Jesus described in Matthew 23:27, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.” I felt a lot like that, sitting on my dirty floor. Just dead and rotting inside and spewing that rottenness at my children.
So I cried and confessed and hugged timid children, though it felt wrong to be allowed their embrace. They are so forgiving. Even more so is Our God. I confess to you, because you might see a mom who “has it altogether,” but it’s often a whitewashed tomb concealing struggles and sin and rottenness and it’s not fair to let you think otherwise. No one ever has it altogether and is outside of the need of prayer and God’s assistance in keeping a “clean home.” That’s why Proverbs 28:13 promises, “He who covers his sins will not prosper, but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.” Thank God there is mercy and grace, because I am so desperately in need of them.