3 drops of grape juice

mornings at our house are much like the final laps of a NASCAR race. everyone is rushing and running and doing their best to slide in the van just before the checkered flag drops. getting a kindergartner, a third grader, and a sixth grade teacher ready for the day and out the door at 6:45 is just short of insane. with the recent addition of late afternoon soccer practice followed by a late dinner, bath w/ hair washing & drying and a goal of bedtime by 8:30... forget about it.

even though i would not change one thing about my family (with the exception that in my perfect world school wouldn't start till about 9:15 or so) our mornings can be fairly crazy. and crazy is the word I choose if nothing goes wrong. add a little sleepy-headed 5 year old waking up on the wrong side of the bed and you might think the sky was falling. can't find soccer cleats, shoes are tied in knots, we just ran out of toothpaste, or 3 small drops of grape juice on the front of a fresh white nicely pressed shirt for mom and the world is rapidly coming to an end. well, just that very thing came to be at our house last week... not the end of the world part but the 3 drops of grape juice on mom's white shirt... just seconds before she was to crank Roxy (the name we have given our 2006 Toyota Sienna).

i witnessed it all first hand. the earth trembled slightly beneath my feet. sweat began to ooze from my brow. i could almost feel the tension. it was just short of actually painful. mom was steaming about those darn drops of untimely grape juice. and rightly so. i would have simply come un-glued. i would have snapped and thrown something. most of us would have done something stupid as we reacted and responded to one of life's little reminder moments.

i think those kinds of things don't just happen... i think they are allowed to happen. i really think GOD lets dumb stuff happen to us to see how we will respond. for us, the 3 drops of grape juice fouled our attitudes for the better part of the morning. everyone was late. the routine had been disrupted. but as i look at those silly moments, what's the big deal? it is grape juice. LORD, remind us all that the little moments that seem so HUGE are in all reality so very small. after all, how big can 3 drops of grape juice actually be?