Fingernail Polish

On June 6, 2006, Rachelle and I woke up feeling pretty tense – not the goal of your vacation at the beach! Late on June 5, Jacob accidentally knocked a bottle of red fingernail polish to the floor, where it broke and covered a ceramic tile and filled the grout around the tile. By the morning of June 6, the tile has been cleaned, but the grout is stained. Amazingly, we managed to not go-off on Jacob, who just felt terrible. As we were frantically cleaning, I kept thinking about the history of this cottage and was praying hard that Ned didn’t freak! After we cleaned the best we could, I pulled Jacob onto my lap and talked with him. I wanted him to understand that I realized this was an accident. He felt that he had ruined our week, because even though we didn’t yell at him, the stress level was pegged as we cleaned. So above all else, I wanted to clearly communicate to him that “There’s nothing you can do to make me love you less.”

In talking about all of this with the kids, it gave me a chance to teach them a couple of things about life, and about how we are to live life in Jesus. First, accidents happen. And secondly, when they do happen, we can make two responses, which in this case, is to either (a) hide the grout stain – it would have been really easy to roll the TV cart over the spill then make a break for Indiana, or (b) be honest with Ned and accountable for our actions. Life is full of these situations, and in them, we can’t control other people’s responses, but we can control ours. So we finished our talk by praying simply, “Jesus, be near to Jacob – let him not be scarred by this. Bless our honesty and give us clean hands and clean hearts.”

So after breakfast on June 6, I went to tell Ned about the accident. Before we entered the cottage, I offered to pay for any damage and repairs. So I showed him the spill, and he said, “I thought by the way you were talking this would be something serious – this is not a big deal, and we can fix it.”

In 20 seconds, grace restored the peace and rest of vacation. And Jesus answered a simple prayer. AMEN.