Two Words

No two words make my heart jump- or sink- more than these- “So, mom…” 

In my experience with teenagers, these two words are followed by bad news.  Maybe my boys think starting with this subtlety will lessen the blow, and maybe that did work- the first time!

Those words, “So, mom…” have been followed with things like these:

“…I’m fine, but I had a car wreck.”

“…I left my lights on all night and my car won’t start.”

“…a funny thing happened.  I closed the door to the church, but left your keys inside.”

“…I was trying to stop, but it was raining.  I wrecked the car again.”

“…I forgot to tell you.  I need poster board and stick on letters for school- tomorrow.” (This one always happens at 10pm)

“…someone cleaned up the lunch trays when I wasn’t looking, and my retainers were on there.”

“…I ran out of gas- in the driveway.”

“…you know those new retainers I got, well, I broke them today.”

“…I need my science book to study, but I left it in my locker. We have to go back to school tonight.”

And…my personal favorite- and most recent (today)-

“…my phone just went in the sewer.” 

After today’s “so, mom…” moment, I laughed (who wouldn’t when your kid loses his cell phone to the sewer), but then I thought about the loss of said phone in a different light. 

To set this up, you have to hear the whole story of the phone incident.

Mitchell is in Savannah this week.  He called- from a friend’s phone- this morning to let me know what happened.  It seems that the jacket he was wearing had a hole in the pocket.  In Mitchell’s words, he knew there was a hole, but never realized that the hole had gotten so big that his phone would fall out.  So, as he was walking down the street today, the phone fell out, hit the ground, and before he realized what was happening, his foot kicked it –“splash”- right into the sewer.  Phone- gone, followed by the “so, mom…” phone call.   

Here’s what I thought of later.  Mitchell knew there was a hole in his pocket, but in not fixing the hole- or at least paying attention to the growing size of it- he lost something.  There was a consequence to him not paying attention or neglecting something he could have fixed.  

The same is true in our Spiritual walk with the Lord.  How many of us have a “hole” that we know is there, but are choosing to ignore?  We may be refusing to acknowledge just how big it’s getting. 

OR-maybe we know it’s big and we’re at risk of losing something, but we just don’t want to do the work to fix it. 

Let’s face it, we all have holes.  The question is, are we willing to fix them?  Fixing them takes effort.  Just acknowledging them means we’ll have to change in some way.  But, if we don’t- there will be consequences.  We’ll lose something.  I don’t know about you, but I think I’d rather fix the hole now than later have to say to God, “So, Father…”

Now…where is that sewing kit…?!