Friday, October 17, 2008

kids, crayons, & forgiveness.

What a day...
Today at work, the kids definately tested my patience and I'm thinking my patience and kindness didn't hold out too well.

The three-year olds today somehow found a fragment of a blue crayon, an itsy bitsy piece they dug up from the sand. A royal blue crayon. They drew ALL over the yellow fort, on every wall, on the inside of the tunnel slide, and the outside of the slide. We had no idea until a couple of them came to us to be "tattle-tells." I must admit, we were pretty shocked. And we were pretty mad, actually I'm rather embarrassed of how mad we got. The kids were put in time out as we scrubbed a good while on the fort to sorta clean the crayon off that had been baked on by the sun. Its true, it really is a funny story.

My heart almost hurts when I think of how ugly we acted towards the kids. I cannot wait to see them tomorrow, to love on them, to make sure they know I love them. Yeah, they messed up. They made a big uh-oh. But how many times do we make big uh-ohs?

If this silly nonsense made me angry, the kids disobeying and being careless, how many times do I break God's heart everyday? His love is always evident. His anger is never so extreme that the goodness of Himself is not shown through. I make stupid choices all the time...every single day. And today I made a dumb choice. I let my not feeling so well and impatience get the best of me. I let that get in the way of loving the way I am suppose to. I can only imagine how God's heart breaks when we put things before Him, when we let pride or self-righteousness, selfishness, impatience, etc get in the way of our testimonies. But He still loves us, He still forgives us, and He still wraps us in His arms of peace. A beautiful thing.

My eyes were opened today...through a hectic, funny time.

Those kids...