Life Lessons from Shattered Pieces

For Mother’s Day, M-dude painted a flower pot and planted a flower in it for me.  He was so proud of his gift.

This morning Miss A accidentally dropped the pot, shattering it into little pieces.  She was devastated, and apologized through her tears.

Life Lessons

I did not react well to what happened.  I got mad at her for touching it, and made her feel even worse than she already did. She didn’t need me to add to the guilt that she was already feeling.  It was an accident, and it was not her fault.

I took a few minutes to think about what happened, and reminded myself that it was not the pot that mattered.  It was the look on my sons’ face when he gave it to me that mattered.  It was the love that went into creating the pot.  And the memories that I now cherish in my heart that matter most.

Once we all calmed down, I did what any good mom would do.  I turned it into a life lesson.  I cleaned up the broken pot, and swept up the dirt.  Then we took the flower to the garden outside and planted it in its new home.

I explained that our physical body is like the flower pot.  It holds our soul while we live here on Earth, but one day our body will die, and our soul will go to heaven to live with Jesus forever.  Our flower no longer has it’s pot, but it has all the soil it needs to grow in our garden.  And whenever we look at that beautiful flower we will be reminded of the gift that Jesus gave us when He died on the cross for us so that we can live with Him forever in heaven.

I hope you had a wonderful Mother’s Day and I challenge you to look for the lesson in the everyday messes of life.