This past week while bringing in our load of groceries, my daughter's bag had a hole in it. Unfortunately for her (but mostly me), the bag was holding the largest size of bright burnt orange buffalo hot sauce I could find in the store. It shattered onto the floor, swallowing up the tile into a puddle of fiery orange liquid and fragments of glass. This happened right at the entry way into our home from the garage where five other little feet were about to trod. As my daughter quickly informed me, "Mom, we have a problem!" My eyes skipped focus to her feet where the problem existed.
This surely was a lesson in patience as I had just ventured to multiple stores with all of my babes and was running on the tiniest fumes one could imagine. But, this isn't a conversation about patience. Although I will say that after a growl, a scream in my brain, a possible child-like stomp of my foot, I calmly starting directing traffic and the clean up process began. My oldest daughter is one of the most responsible middle schoolers I know, but she literally looked at me dumbfounded. The overwhelming scenario in front of her left her oblivious at where to begin. Honestly, it had me a little overwhelmed at where to begin with it being bright orange and a mass quantity, but I told her to just go one step at a time. I was certain we could quickly get it soaked up with paper towels and the whole thing could be forgotten. She started wiping down the walls and molding where it had splattered and I finished bringing in groceries. When we got ready to tackle the puddle, we just started throwing paper towels by the handfuls on it to soak as much up as we could. I would scoop a handful of the now orange paper towels into my hands and throw it into the bag she was holding for me. But geez, every time I would get one load over to her, it seemed like a river of hot sauce was still flowing. The paper towels would drip brightly no matter how quickly I made the transition and this job I hoped to be a quick fix ended up taking much longer than anticipated. Nonetheless, one dedicated step at a time, a whole roll of paper towels, and a steam mop finished the job. Our tile was back and although the grout may tell a different story, the mess was clean.
During this process, I couldn't help but think of many of my sister friends who have found themselves standing dumbfounded before an absolute wreck....a wreck of a marriage, of a husband, of their life they were so certain they were protecting. There is nothing like that moment when the mess seems so big that you don't even know where to begin. Some start with assurance that with a few paper towels, they can get this wiped right up. Some try to pull a rug over to just cover it up and go back to their semblance of terrible normal. Some turn right back around and leave that mess right where it is often time escaping to somewhere new that they will begin on their next mess.
And by God's grace, any one of these sisters finds out somewhere along the way that they don't have to clean this mess up by themselves. That right there, is step one. Now the real cleaning can begin. It isn't going to be swift or easy. It is going to be messy and sometimes it's going to seem like a bigger mess is being made in the process. But, as His daughter, we submit to the greatest cleaner of them all. We obey when He tells us to sweep here or wipe here. We obey when He tells us to keep going when it seems hopeless. We obey. Somehow, someway, we end up on the other side of the mess. It may not look like what we thought...or maybe it does...but the biggest thing we learn is that we can take credit for none of it.
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