In This Moment I Know Two Things . . .

The cupcakes were all lined up.  Beautiful. 

I didn't count the hours but a whole day went by with us all working on cupcakes.  The liners all wrapped and little pink ribbons stopped from fraying and touched with small pearls.

Donated and dear to our hearts.

There are only a dozen left.  Almost finished.

And I am tired.  And his imagination runs as lively as it did in the morning hours.

He has an old lens and is sprinkling tautar sace on the top of the icing.  He doesn't even know what tarter sauce is -  but his play often stretches the realm of my understanding.

Or is it just sometimes better to ignore and hope what I think might happen won't happen?

And then it happens.

Lens falls onto cupcake and crushes a pale pink snow of icing.

And while rising to my feet screaming No, Max, look what you have done I am knowing that I am not handling this well already.

But isn't it always in the first seconds before thinking has begun that we react and react badly?

Little hands holding heavy lens and mind not old enough yet to think ahead to what might happen.

Shelby worked hard on those, we all worked hard.  Can't you just stay away?  spills from my lips.

I take the steps to the cupcake and pick it up knowing it can be fixed.  Icing can be scraped off and replaced.

And behind me stands my son.

I turn and see a face in tears.  Wet sorrow falling into a mouth opened with no sound coming out.

And he thinks cupcake is more important than son.

And at this moment I know.

In this moment I know two things.  He will remember this forever or he won't remember it at all.

And as the first sounds of regret leave his mouth I gather him in my arms to be sure he knows cupcake is not more important.

If this moment is remembered what do I want etched?

It is not his actions that need forgiving but mine.  And he is gift to me.  And what I say and do now is entrusted unto me from my Father above.  To mold my son.  To shape him into vessel of love. 

How will he know if I do not show him?

How will he know if I expect from him what I do not do myself?

And these thoughts lead into these same guilts in my larger world.

Yahwey,

Forgive me when I fail to meet my own standards - but still expect others to. 

Forgive me when I choose the bad when I know the good.

Forgive me when I won't apply to myself what I want from others.

Forgive me when I am so quick to see the evil in others and not in myself.

Forgive me when temptation comes and not only he deceives me - but I deceive myself.

Forgive me when I fail what You entrust to me.
Forgive me.

Amen.