Rice Lessons

I hate cleaning up rice.

I don't mind making it. I love eating it. I love that my children love to eat it and it fills them up.

But I hate cleaning it up. All those sticky, tiny shreds of starch that you can't sweep because they'll just slime your broom and leave their remains on the floor anyway. Those deceptive granules cleverly camouflaged  in high chair trays and on dining room floors, just waiting for the opportune moment to attach themselves to your bare foot (gaaaaack! what is THAT???) or your sock (something is sticking... socks shouldn't stick...) or your shoe (Oh lovely... now it's collected friends). Yep, rice is just the pits to clean.

And yet today I found myself down on my hands and knees (creak, groan, lower pregnant body to the floor) cleaning rice grains off my kitchen floor. I probably could have avoided the situation if I had just made two trips clearing the table instead of attempting to pull off a balancing act in one trip. But no, haste was my doom.

And so I stood there, looking at the plate that was now upside down on the floor and the large radius of rice and corn that needed cleaning. And I actually asked aloud, "Really? The day is going pretty well, so let's just throw this in?" But I wasn't thinking about just the rice.

I don't know about you, but I hate not being able to accomplish a task quickly. It's probably why rice clean-up is so vexing. But it also applies to spiritual tasks. Yesterday I asked for prayer to be a better parent, and the very next day I expected myself to perform perfectly. Instead, I awoke to find myself human and flawed, just as I was yesterday.

Today I messed up in my parenting. I made the wrong decision. I took the wrong action. It wasn't even born out of a full morning of stress and hassle, it was just my natural reaction. And I became frustrated that I couldn't get everything right immediately.

Yet, down on my hands and knees, cleaning up the rice, I was given a moment of insight instead of shame. (Maybe that's what prayer does, not magically make me a better person.) The thought came to my mind that, instead of my journey as a parent being a quick sweep-it-up job, it's more like rice: it's slow going, you have to pick up each individual grain, and just when you think you got them all, one will probably get stuck to your sock later that day and be all nasty and squishy when you pick it off. But that's just the nature of rice, er, growth. No need to beat myself up. No need to give up and say, "What's the point of cleaning any of it up?" Just pick up the next grain whenever you find it.