At Least You Don't Smell Like Fish...

This morning I had a revelation... It all started when I grounded Kaira (for those of you who don't know, that's the youngest one of my crazy bunch). You see, I had been telling her since Saturday to clean her room. Even though today is only Tuesday, it has been a super busy week for me already and because of this, I wasn't on top of things at home like I like to be, but hey- I trust my crazy gang to buckle down and get the job done. And usually, they do. Until they don't. Anyway, its Tuesday morning and I crack at the sight of this little girl's room. I smiled at her and in my merriest Mary Poppins voice, I told her she was grounded. The attitude that ensued was treacherous. You would have thunk I did something extremely inconceivably wrong by grounding her. So, I commented on a social media outlet, that little miss thang didn't seem to understand the beating that was about to commence. And that's when revelation hit me- kind of like when you're going 600 mph and a brick wall suddenly jumps in front of you. Yeah- painful, I know. 

I started thinking (dangerous in and of itself, but that's a topic for another day...) about all of the times God tells me to do something and I lay around and blatantly don't do it. I began to wonder how many times God actually has to tell me to do something before I do it or if God has to use the parental voice (I actually imagined God yelling at me in Spanish- as this is the only parental voice the people who imagine they are grown, but really have no clue what grown is all about and may not live to actually see grown, will listen to. Pretty funny if you are a predominantly English speaking person and generally feel that God converses with me in English). Finally, I wondered if God ever got tired of telling me to do things and if the messes I tend to find myself in aren't really messes at all, but rather the commencement of a beating from God. After that, all I could do was smile and thank God that I didn't smell like the inside of a fish for the rest of my life.

So, I'm really gonna be mindful of hearing the voice of God from now on and I am going to work on not invoking a beating of mass destruction into my life. I really am. And the next time I hear you talk about how everything is not right in your life and everything is going wrong and nothing is going right, I might slip you a note with a stupid emoticon on it, that says something like, "listen to God." But more than likely, I will say loudly for everyone to hear, "at least you don't smell like fish!" And everyone will know what I am talking about, because EVERYONE who is in the know, KNOWS...

...and needless to say, Kaira didn't get any type of beating... I'm sure there will be plenty of other times for that...