I was thoroughly humbled today. By my 4 year old.
We all woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. Everyone was fighting, irritating each other, or otherwise causing chaos.
After hours of the kids just being ridiculous, I hid in my bathroom for a few minutes of doom scrolling to keep my sanity. When I came out, Jake informed me that Ella had colored the floor. And not just colored it, but took colored pencils and traced the space between wood planks in our floor. Just gave them some nice, bright outlines
I know kids do this kind of crap, but I just was not in the mood. I blew it way out of proportion and claimed that she ruined our floor and yelled at her about how she should know that the floor and furniture and anything NOT COLORING PAPER is off limits. I just let it all out.
I walked to the sink to get a magic eraser from the cabinet underneath, and sweet Ella looked up at me with the saddest little tear-filled eyes.
“Do you… do you still love me?”
Holy crap. HOLY CRAP.
This little angel I had just yelled at for being a little bit destructive genuinely worried that it might make me love her less.
My heart immediately softened into a squishy pile of love. I held her close while tears spilled over onto her cheeks, and pulled her away enough to look her in her eyes and say,
“Nothing you could ever do would make me not love you. You could do the naughtiest thing ever and it would NEVER change how much I love you.”
We all hugged, and we all moved on with a resolution to be kinder to each other the rest of the day.
They still fought all afternoon, I still felt a little grumpy, but man. That girl got me.
It made me think of Heavenly Father and how much He loves us. Nothing we could do would ever change how much He loves us. Sometimes we’re destructive, sometimes we do things we know we shouldn’t. Sometimes we make honest mistakes. Sometimes we do things we wish we could take back.
But nothing we could ever do would make Him not love us.