Something happened recently that I was not expecting. Don’t worry–everyone is safe and healthy. What happened falls in the category of “kid related accidents that end up with property damage”. You very likely may have your own version of this situation as your kids grow up.
I made a smoothie for a couple of my kids, and the dishwasher was sitting open because another child was at that moment unloading her “shelf” of the dishwasher. I reached around one of my kids (I blame this part on myself) to get a clean glass out of the dishwasher to put the smoothie into. When I did that, the child took a step backward and fell on the dishwasher. This is not a toddler. This is an elementary school aged child. The door made a terrible creaking noise. And I quickly grabbed her up in my arms and held her. She was crying. She had fallen on glass plates. Miraculously, none broke. And I said, “Oh, sweetheart, are you okay?” I snuggled her, and she calmed down.
Outwardly, I was calm, but inwardly I was struggling. I’ve learned this about myself over the years, but I have this belief that we take care of our stuff, especially expensive stuff, having to do with the house. And when house stuff gets damaged, it makes me mad. I was pretty inwardly mad because now I looked at my dishwasher and at the moment that she had fallen on it, the entire thing came unglued from the granite. And the metal piece across the top was now extending beyond the countertop in an odd position. So I thought, “Well, the dishwasher may be broken.” Mind you, this is a dishwasher that was just installed one year ago. If you haven’t bought a dishwasher lately–they’re expensive.
We went on throughout the morning, and a few hours later, two of my kids were eating lunch, and this same child got up from lunch and she was walking backward, acting silly. (I love the friendship between these two kids!) The child walking backward had her empty glass bowl in one hand, which had the remnants of tomato soup in it and a plastic plate in the other hand. I was at the kitchen sink loading the dishwasher. I can hardly believe it, but she walked backwards and fell on the dishwasher AGAIN. Splatters of tomato soup flew everywhere. And this time, unfortunately, I wasn’t so kind. I picked her up off the dishwasher and I was said in a frustrated tone, “The first time is an accident, and the second time–watch your body.” And it was not a great moment in our house. And that is not the kind of reaction that I want to have, but that’s the reaction that I did have.
She felt bad. I felt bad about how I’d talked to her and about the dishwasher. And so sometimes when I get really mad about things, I just need a minute to calm down.
And when my kids were little, I used to step inside the pantry and close the pantry door and just kind of take a minute. Now my husband works from home, and the kids are older, and so I said to them,” I’m just going to take the dog for a walk a minute. I just need to calm down from all of this.”
We talk about our kids having big emotions. This mama has big emotions too! So I left, and I started walking down the street. I was so mad about the dishwasher because now the dishwasher door was further bent down towards the floor. And I was worried that our relatively new dishwasher wasn’t going to work anymore.
I was walking the dog, trying to calm down and get some perspective. I was praying and asking God for help. This question popped into my mind:
Where do we go from here?
I see that as encouragement because I think I used to sit in the feeling of, “I don’t like this. This did not turn out in the way that I wanted it to.” Emotionally stuck. But this question felt different.
You’ve heard the statement. “It is what it is.” That statement is very static. I was so thankful that the new question popped into my head because it’s different from just resigning yourself to a fact. The statement “It is what it is” speaks to the fact that you can’t change it. It happened. But the new question—Where do we go from here? suggests forward movement.
Someone had fallen on the dishwasher TWICE. But now that that is the situation at hand…Where do I go from here? I just kind of thought and I prayed, and first thing that came to mind was, I owe that sweet little girl an apology.
And it was interesting that it was this child that fell on the dishwasher because she, more than any of my other kids, is the first one to come to me so sweetly after she has kind of flipped out or responded in a way that is over the top. She’ll come to me and she’ll say, “Mommy, I’m sorry.” And we have a sweet moment of connection and love and forgiveness. I was walking down the street and I thought, I need to come to her and ask forgiveness for the way that I talked to her.
And then the second thing that came to my mind was, all right, you gotta run the dishwasher this afternoon, see if it works. And by the way, it does!
This situation is going to adjust my thinking from here on out because there is so much unexpected with kids. My girls were just being kids. When she was walking backwards, being silly with her sister, there was no ill intent in her heart at all. And these things are going to happen. That’s why they’re called the unexpected. We can’t see them coming. We can’t plan for them. We can’t arrange things.
But when these unexpected things happen, where do we go from here?
And then another thing that I often think about in moments of frustration or as I’m trying to work things out in my mind, I think, “What is true right now?” And oftentimes that actually leads me to thankfulness about aspects of a situation.
So as I was walking down my street, I thought, what is true right now? I am so thankful that these sisters have a sweet relationship. You know, not all siblings are good friends. Sometimes they’re just really different from each other. They like each other, and they’re going to learn to appreciate things about each other. But these two sisters in particular are best friends.
The whole thing happened because they were laughing together, they were sharing a sweet moment. And so even in my frustration about the dishwasher, I was able to say, “Man, I am so thankful that these two are friends!”
And so when the unexpected happens again–because it will in my life and in your life–we have the opportunity to ask ourselves these two questions.
Where do we go from here?
What is true in this situation?
Because in looking for good things, things to be thankful for in situations, I’m not trying to just be an eternal optimist. But I’m trying to see the situation for what it is to anchor to thankfulness.
A friend of mine said that in small group recently: anchor to thankfulness. And I love that even during these unexpected things which will come, we can look for parts of the situation that we’re truly thankful for. And it’s not going to make it all better. Because honestly, now we can only have one drawer of the dishwasher open at a time because it will literally fall out of the space. Oh well! That’s our new normal until we have time to take a closer look.
I hate to break it to you, but if you think these unexpected situations go away as your kids get older, they do get less frequent, just more expensive. A friend’s teenager was moving the car and crashed one car into their other car, leaving both cars damaged. Oops!
