Have you seen the commercial where the little boy is sitting at the kitchen table and he  pours himself a glass of orange juice?  He fills it to the very brim just to the point of overflowing!   It appears to be early in the morning and his Dad walks into the room.  His response is beautiful!  Very unlike the response you might expect, or the response I might have received as a child.  The Dad looks at the glass and says, “How are you doing bud?”  with a smile and a kind look on his face!   I was so happy he didn’t say, “What are you doing?!   You are going to a make a mess!”   And I thought, that guy is the kind of parent I  want to be.

A common phrase in our home when my kids were little was “Spills Happen!”  Especially, of course, since a great deal of the spilling was being done by me, the Mom!  I am a bit clumsy so I could hardly get angry at my little ones when they spilled something!

Life is messy!  It’s all about how you respond to those spills!

My cousin, Ashley, who is a young mom of two, made the most beautiful remarks recently on her Instagram and I asked her if I could share them with you.  She said,

“As I was walking down the street today carrying Quinn and holding Jackson’s hand someone said to me, ‘Looks like you have your hands full!’  And my only thought was….and my heart is even fuller.”

Life is all about perspective.   Ashley is such a beautiful example of counting your blessings!  It brought a tear to my eye to see the heart of this amazing mom put into words.

You can’t always control what happens, but you can control how you respond to it.  Once when we were at Disneyland when my girls were 2 and 4, we were waiting in line for the Dumbo ride.  We loved Disneyland and used to go there like it was our back yard park!  In those days the passes weren’t as pricey as they are now!  The first year we lived in California we went 25 times!  This particular day it was hot, and the line was long, and a full blown tantrum ensued right there in the long Dumbo line.  I’m talking about laying on the ground, kicking and screaming  – Defcon 1!   Amazingly, I was able to stay calm realizing I wasn’t going to control the situation.  Some of the people around me looked at me with that “you are a horrible parent, control your child” look.  I simply turned to them and said,  “I know it’s hard to understand if you don’t have a child that does this.”

Spills happen, don’t make them more messy!

I’ve always been the “glass half full” kind of person.  Always trying to look for that silver lining.  When my girls were little, we used to read a board book called “It Looked Like Spilt Milk” by Charles G. Shaw.  The author brilliantly goes from page to page while the reader tries to guess what the white splotches could be!  In the end he tells you – “Sometimes it looked like Spilt Milk.  But it wasn’t Spilt Milk.  It was just a Cloud in the Sky.”

Look for that silver lining in your daily life.  Spills happen, but they can be amazing opportunities to show compassion and forgiveness, and chance to count your blessings!