On potty training regression and sin

“Hannah pooped on the floor!” I am getting so tired of hearing those words. Our little princess has been sliding down the slippery slope of potty training regression for several months now. She was completely potty-trained at the beginning of last fall, but since about January, not so much. Her most recent setback is in the area of “number two.” For our little diva, it is not enough that she fails to make it to the potty when she has to go “number two.” Nope! She is so independent that she has to try to rid herself of the mess because she doesn’t like it in her underpants. Last night my bathroom looked like someone tossed a poopy diaper grenade in there. At least twice, I heard shouts of, “I stepped in Hannah’s poop!” It seemed we kept finding little “care packages” tucked away in different places around the bathroom and beyond. The smell was overwhelming, and the clean up was torturous to say the least.

But come on….you know me right? You can feel me heading toward the lesson. Are you thinking, “DISGUSTING! How in the world is she going to turn that YUCK into a lesson from God?” Ladies and gentlemen, I do NOT turn them into lessons from God. He does, and here’s what He revealed to me.

How often are we like Hannah? We sin, and try to clean up the mess by ourselves. But what results is a nightmare of poopy proportions. As we try to clean up the sin by ourselves, and sometimes long after, we keep finding remnants of our sin tucked away in unexpected places. Sorrow or pain the sin brought or a tender spot left by the hurt of the sin or that sense of shame when the sin flits through our mind. And the stench! Ahh the stench of our sin! It is overwhelming and makes our attempts at clean up so torturous.

But imagine this. Imagine if Hannah had not tried to clean up that accident by herself. Imagine if she had trotted down the stairs, uncomfortable from the mess in her pants, but contrite and looking to her mother for help. I would have carefully removed the offending underpants, cleaned up the mess on her, and taken care of the soiled clothing. The floor would not have had to be cleaned, seventeen towels and three shirts would not have been stained, and the entire upstairs would not have smelled like it desperately needed to be fumigated.

Let my daughter’s poopy problem bring you to your senses today. It is humbling and uncomfortable to turn to God with our failures, but He is much better equipped to deal with the mess we made then we are. He will take our sin (every single time we commit it), clean us up, and care for the mess we made. We just have to humble ourselves and go to Him.