Celebrating family life | teaching our children
Jena Muhr ponders a lesson in forgiveness sparked when her little girl fixed a broken statue with loving care.
My oldest recently turned 6 years old, and she has been trying to be extra helpful around the house. She enjoys helping vacuum, dust, and clean windows—but only on her timeline. I am always thankful to have a helper around the house, even if it takes three times as long to get the job done.
I needed to take the car in to get a sensor fixed and my mother-in-law (Abuela) stayed with the kids. While I was away Georgie asked for cleaning supplies to dust the family room. She showed Abuela where they were kept and went about dusting the family room. We have a statue of Mama Mary and Baby Jesus that we keep next to the fireplace. I was told later that Georgie dusted them with loving care and was so sweet. But poor baby Jesus had already been decapitated once and his head fell off again, even with the most gentle duster. Georgie, in an attempt to fix Baby Jesus, used her black glitter glue and did her very best to put His head back on.
That night over dinner she told me in the sweetest voice ever how sorry she was, how she tried to be careful and how she had tried to fix Baby Jesus’s head. She finished the story with “Are you mad, Mama?”
How blessed am I to have such a sweet and wonderful little girl? Jesus was easily fixed with super glue, but He still bears a little line of black left over from Georgie’s glitter glue. I can’t help but think that’s how most of us walk around. We try our best to follow the Will of God, to be good people and to live up to the Catholics who have come before us. But it feels like often we fail through our actions and reactions. We come apart in our intentions when we try to stay together. And then we look towards the tools that we keep in our toolbox to fix the problems that have been created.
Glitter glue and telling Mama might not be the solution to every problem,
but it is certainly a good start for anyone—especially my daughter.
Like our Father in Heaven, I was not mad about Georgie decapitating Jesus. She did not do it on purpose, it was a little girl’s accident. The same way that our Father is not mad at us when we fall and have to dust ourselves off. He loves us for trying, for positive intentions, and for continually striving to be our best.
And that is all that we can do, our best—every day—with God’s help and guidance we can strive to be the best that we can.
Copyright 2022 Jena Muhr
Images: copyright 2022 Jena Muhr, all rights reserved.