"The Lord's loving-kindnesses indeed never cease, for his compassions never fail."
Lamentations 3:22
For some reason there's always good inspiration in a poop story.
So THIS just happened:
Tubby time, check. Jammies picked out, check. Girl jumping around doing the 'nakey dance' in her birthday suit, check. Only, guess who totally forgot that nakey dancing is a tad more dangerous when the Tiny Girl has had belly troubles (of the explosive, liquidated sort) as of late? This mama.
There is a strange incongruous pause in her dance rhythm, just long enough to make my brain go "Oh....," but not nearly long enough to slap a diaper on that tush before I am graced with my first terrifying motherly visual of green liquid (that should never have been liquid), shooting like a high pressured faucet at mock speed from my child's rear. Awesome.
I know I should be horrified, but instead I see her face- the big eyes, the worried lips, and immediately do the "Oh hunny. It's totally okay! Don't touch it. Be right back.'
A quick clean-up of the shame and fear she's facing, and I race downstairs and completely lose it in laughter because WOW. Just wow.
I come back up, can't completely contain my hysterics, and I hear a tiny voice chime with a chuckle, and a "Oh! green mommy! Silly Sadie, got poop on the floor." Ha.
Now I know this isn't a perfect analogy, but this messy, ugly, stinking, OFFENSIVE pile of green poop on my carpet- even that- stirs an echo in my heart of how deeply my Father loves me.
How the parts of me that should turn The Holy One's stomach, the things I immediately wish I could hide... those awful, embarrassing, not at all pretty things that make up me, those are the very things that He chooses to love. THOSE are the things that He moved Heaven and Earth to "clean up."
It was my heart that He wanted. And He wanted it so badly that He wrapped His glory in a suit of skin; spent nine months inside the belly of a woman; was birthed soaked in blood and nastiness, stinking and uncomfortable and vulnerable into a world that would wound Him, reject Him, even kill Him; and let a woman lay Him in a feed trough.
And YES, He did it because He's awesome, and worthy of ALL glory and all honor, and just plain freaking amazing beyond words, but what grips my heart tonight is this truth that I often miss:
that He did it for me.
The Lord wanted me,
wanted to remove my shame,
wanted to get as close to me as He could,
wanted to be the One to clean up my poo on a regular basis.
Small stuff to a Good Daddy who Loves His children... more than that, IS Love Himself.
The only Daddy who brings joy and peace and comfort, and rescue from shame and fear and death to those of us who can't help but bless His name with every fiber of our being because we know how absolutely astounding it is that we get to know Him, and that He asks us to call Him "Abba" - meaning daddy.
"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows."
Luke 12:6-7
