Clumsy Girls Need Grace

Hubby and I always talk about things we hope get passed down to our kids, and things we hope skip right over them. For instance, I had years of braces, but Hubby has naturally straight teeth. Guess which one of those I hope my kids get? Most of those things we talk about won’t manifest until a little later (a couple more years, at least!), but there’s one thing I’ve already seen in my daughter that she got from me…

Her clumsiness.

That actually would be a good royal name for her. More applesauce, Your Clumsiness?

At least once a day, I hear her cry out from across the house. I know nothing major has gone down, because it’s been so frequent that I can pretty much tell you what’s happened. She has stubbed her toe. Almost every single time. Or maybe she dropped something on it, or stumbled off of her plastic, high-heeled princess shoes, or hit her elbow on a doorframe. You know – the usual.

Part of me totally understands. It’s truly frustrating to trip over nothing and have bruises up and down your legs you don’t really remember getting. It’s a pain (ha ha, right?) to bump knees and elbows and toes on everything that sticks out one millimeter. It stinks to be a little less coordinated than the average (already uncoordinated) three-year-old. But the rest of me knows I have one job: teaching her that every little bump or bruise (or thing that doesn’t go her way) can’t be a big deal.

That’s where I’m a fault. Sometimes, I’m the one who makes a giant deal out of a spill, or a crash of something breakable. I’m the one who shouts in pain when I stub my toe – or like this morning, when I hit my knee getting in the car, and exclaimed, “Ouch! I think I broke my leg!” I hit it pretty hard, okay?!

It just isn’t practical to make a huge deal out of a stubbed toe. Or spilled milk. Or a bruised elbow. These things are going to happen, and she and I both need a lesson in patience and shrugging things off. We sometimes bring out the worst in each other, making big deals of things we shouldn’t. But it’s a learning process. I’m hoping to teach her to let it go earlier than I learned – because I’m obviously still working on it even now.

I know that what we need is grace. We need a reminder that we aren’t perfect, we will never be perfect, and it’s okay that way. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t need the love and blood of a Savior to redeem our imperfections. Because we screw up, we react poorly, and then we feel guilt about it, we are human. And humans need Jesus to cover their sins and screw ups with amazing grace. A lesson in grace for my clumsy girl is also a lesson in grace for me.