Clean Walls and Other Naive Concepts

It's so easy before you become a parent to plan out exactly how things will go or what your children will do or will NEVER do (ha ha!). I can remember a conversation with my mother-in-law about how I was determined to keep my walls clean. That I couldn't fathom how people's walls could get so dirty from little fingers and feet. I was simply going to make my walls off-limits; you just don't touch walls in my house!

Yeah.

Right.

It's almost an arrogance, though I would never have considered it so when I was taking notes on other people's children, compiling my lists of Always Do This and Never Do That. And I'd even heard people (namely my own mother) tell me, "Watch out what you say you will NEVER do, because that's usually exactly what you do! I didn't listen though, and now I'm having to take back almost every dogmatic statement from pre-parenthood. Here are a few:

"My child will never throw a fit in public."

"I will never revolve my day around my child's nap schedule."

"I will never yell at my child." (yikes, if only that were true)

"My child's clothes will always match." (!)

"My child will never have a Kool-Aid moustache. How tacky!"

"Our car will not have loose Cheerios littering its seats."

And other such nonsense. The pure truth is that children change our whole lives inside and out. They are the hot water that reveals how selfish we really are, and they humble us as only they can. They teach us not to speak before we've been there, and they remind us not to judge people so quickly. They make us flee to our Savior for grace and strength! And they make us eat our words.

So to the lady in the supermarket line several years ago with a small child who was making quite the scene over some denied request: I should never have rolled my eyes at you and vowed that my child would never do that. Because he has.

Oh! And my walls are dirty too. :)