The Dungeon of Dishes

We learn so much from our kids. Our relationship with our kids show us how our relationship is and can be with our Heavenly Daddy as well as point out and convict us in the ways we fall short in being that child to Him.

This week I asked Braeden to do the dishes. You would think I asked him to drink out of the toilet. Normally Zach does the dishes. He hates them so he does them as quickly as possible. Braeden takes forever cause he hates them. If I let Merry do them we wouldn’t have any dishes left.

Anyway, like I said, he had a meltdown. He went to the kitchen and did… nothing. Literally.

I went out and “encouraged” him to do what he was told. After moaning, bewailing, sobbing, and begging, it became very quiet in the kitchen. Then I started hearing noises. I knew exactly what he was doing and it wasn’t what he was told to do. I let him be, knowing he needed to learn the lesson. Sure enough, a while later he called me to come look. The kitchen was spotless. The table cleared and wiped up, the floor swept, counters cleared… and dishes still sitting in the sink.

I explained to him that while he did an excellent job on the kitchen, that wasn’t what I asked him to do, so he was still disobeying.  He melted onto the floor in tears. I pointed out that there were only a few dishes and it wouldn’t take him long at all (a lot less time then it took to clean the whole kitchen.) He looked at me in horror. “I put all the other dishes in the sink!” He had collected all the dishes from the table and counter that I hadn’t intended to make hm wash and added them to his sink. Eesh. More meltdown.

I retreated to the livingroom while he headed, finally, to the sink. More lamenting that the water was now cold and slimy. (Sigh) So he had to take all the dishes out and change the water now too. Doing the dishes took about 15 minutes. The whole drawn out process took about two hours.

I couldn’t help but see my own walk with God in all this. How often has He asked me to do something and I balked. I stalled and ignored it. I wasted time and emotional energy. And no amount of pouting, begging or just staring at the problem made it go away or disappear. Then I tried doing other things. Things I thought would please Him. Yet he just pointed at those rotten dishes and asked me, again, to just obey. In the meantime the job has compounded and gotten that much huger! Then that gross water. I waited so long that the job was not only bigger, it was infinitely more unpleasant. Yup. That’s me.

He asks me to do a simple task and I make it into a miserable time consuming experience.

Ouch. Yeah, we learn a lot from our kids.