Accidents Happen
Josiah is at that stage where he is saying the cutest stuff. We can't believe some of the stuff that comes out of his mouth! Lora was at the grocery store yesterday and she picked up a bottle of pasta sauce and accidentally knocked over the bottle next to it. It crashed to the ground and spilled all over! So she went and found an employee and he came to clean it up. When Lora went back to the cart to keep pushing, Josiah said, "Accidents happen, mom!"
Not only is that cute, it brought back a memory from a few months ago when Josiah spilled something all over our kitchen floor. I still remember, instead of getting mad, being very intentional about saying, "Accidents happen" mutiple times. Here's why.
Several years ago I read a story about a famous research scientist that totally impacted me. The scientist was asked to explain his remarkable success in making several medical breakthroughs. He traced it back to one defining moment as a young child. One of his earliest memories was opening the refrigerator and grabbing a bottle of milk, but the bottle slipped out of his hands and ended up all over the kitchen floor. Instead of yelling at him or scolding him, his mother said, “Robert, what a great mess you have made. I have rarely seen such a huge puddle of milk. The damage has been done. Would you like to play in the milk for a few minutes before we clean it up?”
After a few minutes of playing, his mom matter-of-factly said, “Robert, what we have here is a failed experiment in how to effectively carry a big bottle with two tiny hands. Let’s go out in the back yard and fill the bottle with water and see if we can discover a way of carrying it without dropping it.” It was at that moment that Robert said he knew he didn't need to be afraid of making mistakes. He learned that mistakes are simply opportunities to learn something new!
All of that is to say this: accidents happen. But if we learn from them it's "no harm, no foul."
Not only is that cute, it brought back a memory from a few months ago when Josiah spilled something all over our kitchen floor. I still remember, instead of getting mad, being very intentional about saying, "Accidents happen" mutiple times. Here's why.
Several years ago I read a story about a famous research scientist that totally impacted me. The scientist was asked to explain his remarkable success in making several medical breakthroughs. He traced it back to one defining moment as a young child. One of his earliest memories was opening the refrigerator and grabbing a bottle of milk, but the bottle slipped out of his hands and ended up all over the kitchen floor. Instead of yelling at him or scolding him, his mother said, “Robert, what a great mess you have made. I have rarely seen such a huge puddle of milk. The damage has been done. Would you like to play in the milk for a few minutes before we clean it up?”
After a few minutes of playing, his mom matter-of-factly said, “Robert, what we have here is a failed experiment in how to effectively carry a big bottle with two tiny hands. Let’s go out in the back yard and fill the bottle with water and see if we can discover a way of carrying it without dropping it.” It was at that moment that Robert said he knew he didn't need to be afraid of making mistakes. He learned that mistakes are simply opportunities to learn something new!
All of that is to say this: accidents happen. But if we learn from them it's "no harm, no foul."
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