I really had cleaned the girls’ bathroom a few days earlier. Honest! However, on this particular afternoon, when I went in to switch off the forgotten overhead light, I had to immediately turn around and walk back out in order to avoid a complete mental breakdown.

There was the standard mess of toothpaste all over the cabinets and sink, toilet paper everywhere, an un-flushed toilet, and a tipped-over garbage can overflowing with trash. Then, there was the insanity producing mess of a plastic Barbie tub stuffed with Kleenex and then filled with water, a mirror painted in lotion, socks filled with beads and toilet paper, and wet cheese puffs wrapped in washcloths…Seriously?! In that moment, I would have thrown in the towel, but I couldn’t find one. So, instead, I shut the door, found my secret stash of chocolate, sat in my comfy chair, and congratulated myself on raising such creative and curious children.

As parents we are faced with moments like these on a far too regular basis. These moments are an opportunity to make a choice.

We can choose to experience joy, or we can allow external circumstances to deem us as failures.

We can choose to give ourselves grace, or we can continue to set up unrealistic expectations that defeat us every time.

We can choose to hold a mindset of peace, or we can let the condemnation flow.

We can choose to allow the situation to teach our children, or we can choose to lose our temper and shame our children.

The choice is ours.

By no means is this choice an easy one to make, and we may never perfect the art of choosing joy. Making the wrong choice once, however, should not hinder us from putting forth the effort to make a better choice the next time. We must embrace the challenge, one moment at a time.

In my moment, I chose joy. Trust me, that does not happen as often as I would like, but it did happen this time. I chose to joyfully celebrate my children by focusing on their healthy curiosity and expression of creativity. I concentrated on the blessing of four beautiful children who are, obviously, secure in their surroundings. Above all, I chose to give myself some grace. 

On this day, my success was not defined by the cleanliness of a bathroom or by what others might think of me. My success was defined by my conscious choice to preserve my peaceful state of mind and to value relationship over order.

Oh, and when my older two children got off the bus that day, they got to experience the joy of serving one’s family through cleaning a bathroom. Now that’s joy.