Hot Chocolate & Flexibility

What does hot chocolate have to do with flexibility?  Not much actually.  But they are both just more of the little tiny life lessons I've learned this week through daily life with my kids.  I think so often in my life I have expected God to speak to me through a "burning bush" experience or boldly proclaim a lesson.  But more often it seems He takes the small, day to day things, and teaches me a subtle lesson through them and through my kids.

Hot Chocolate
Last week we had a chilly morning and my son was running behind in getting ready for the day.  I was at the door and ready to head to the gym when he said he had just finished making his hot chocolate and needed to drink it first.  I glance at this mug, nearly full and something in the back of my head said "this is not a good idea" but my impatience over ruled common sense and I told him, "just grab it and bring it, you can drink it on the way."  He climbed in the truck and sat the mug in the cup holder.  Well we are parked on quite a hilly driveway, if you have been to my house, I'm sure you will agree!  The incline alone nearly made it overflow and backing down would surely do it.  I told him to hold it I didn't want it to spill.  He complied.  We make it to the gym without incident.  But as I'm getting out I hear "whoops, mom, I spilt some of it, but it was almost gone and hardly any of it got on the seat."  Obviously we have two different opinions of what "hardly any" really means.  At that point though I just took his word for it.  By the time we finished at the gym and I took him to the school, he hopped out and then I saw why he had been sitting oddly in the seat...this LARGE spot all over his seat that he was hiding.  Grrrrrr.  It had sat there soaking the whole time we were in the gym and though I wiped at it, the damage was pretty much done.  Proud to say though, I handled it quite well, figured that it just added to the character of the already patch work of stains the kids have managed to somehow get on the seats, despite only drinking water or drinks with lids.  How does that happen??  This one does stand out though, especially being in the front.  The rest of the week goes by without incident and somehow at the family reunion on Sunday we got to talking about food, drink and kids in cars and I mentioned to my aunt and my mom that my son had just made this big stain by spilling his chocolate milk on the seat.  Oh my gosh!  My son was standing there and you would have thought I had just made the world's largest blunder!  It was NOT chocolate milk, it was HOT chocolate he quickly informed all of us.  We were like "whatever"...the result is the same.  But in his mind, there was a very distinct difference.  So...how does this apply to our spiritual lives?  How about when we "rank" sins? Or call sin by a better sounding name? Or excuse our behavior over technicalities?  The result was the same no matter what I called it.  There is now a big stain on the seat.  That is the same thing with sin.  We might sit on it, trying to cover it, but it's still there.  We downplay the seriousness of it.  We give it different names....murder becomes abortion, theft becomes borrowing, gossip becomes prayer requests, immorality becomes an affair, anger becomes indignation, rebellion becomes a free spirit, the list could go on and on.  Isn't it all sin in God's eyes?  Now I could probably go on and do a whole new blog on removing the stain of sin, but that's another story.  This one, simply for me, was learning to call sin what it is, it's time to quit sugarcoating it in order to make it easy to accept and swallow!

Flexibility
My daughter last night was trying to mimic some poses of her as a baby.  When she was really small she would hold her bottle with her feet and feed herself that way.  No hands at all, just fold right up in half.  Back then it wasn't as funny as she had some serious Sensory Integration Disorder issues.  But looking at the pictures now makes us laugh...and very grateful!   Well, she never could fold up last night like in the picture.  So she announced "I'm just getting older and not as flexible!"  Of course she still had to show me up by putting one foot behind her head!  Part of me wanted to join her on the floor and show her I could do it too, but common sense prevailed and with the dread of getting stuck like that, I resigned myself to being "old" and I agreed with her that I could not do it and didn't even bother trying.  Flexibility does decrease with age, but with proper exercise and stretching you can retain quite a bit of flexibility.  As I was despairing of my "oldness", at least in my daughter's view, I thought about other areas in my life that I have become rigid in.  Just because that is how I've always done it, doesn't mean it is right.  Think about palm trees, they flex and when storms hit they withstand the pressure by moving.  Pine trees stand rigid, but in the fiercest of storms, they fall over.  Isaiah 64:8 says, "And yet, Lord, you are our Father. We are the clay, and you are the potter. We are all formed by your hand." Once clay is hardened it can't be formed into anything else.  It can be broken and shattered, but it is inflexible.  If God is going to shape and mold my life, then like clay, I must learn how to remain soft and pliable.  So maybe I can't put my foot behind my head, but my prayer is that I continue to be flexible enough that my life can be shaped to the glory of God!  And what a timely lesson for me, because our family had planned to go to Savannah this weekend, we were looking forward to it and this morning my husband called to say he was on call this week and our trip is postponed for at least a week.  So this afternoon, as I tell the kids not to pack, that we aren't going, I'll have an ample opportunity to teach them something about flexibility.  I can pout, complain, blame, etc...or I can accept it as part of life, encourage them that sometimes things happen and to let it go and move on.  Yes, it is a tiny thing, but teaching kids character...and flexibility...is taught slowly, surely and most of all, by example.