Thomas and the Floor Mats

Sweet Tea. It's bad for kids. But good for community and spiritual growth.

If you give a kid a sweet tea in the backseat of your brand new-to-you minivan on a hot day, there is about a 75% chance of that tea getting dropped into the floorboard of said brand new-to-you minivan. Hopefully you will retain your composure enough to a) not cause a wreck and b) not beat your kid after you get pulled over so you can attempt to mop up the soggy mess until you can get home to clean it out. Oh and of course you will have 3 napkins and a used kleenex to do this with.

Anyway.

When we got home, Thomas had to take the floor mat out and scrub it so the mess wouldn't get worse. And since it's a gorgeous day outside, that means bare feet and dish soap in the driveway.

So we drag out the mat (Ewww it's all sticky and gross!!!) and turn on the hose (Mom, why is the water spraying everywhere around the trigger thing? A gasket? What the heck is a gasket?!) and proceed to wet the mat.

"Now Thomas, " I tell him, in my best Mom the Teacher voice, "you need to wet the mat down first with the mist setting, then put some dish soap on it and scrub the whole mat with the brush, and then rinse the soap and dirt away. Then we'll leave it in the sun to dry and it will be good as new."

So I go in the house for five minutes because I know he's going to get completely soaked and I'll be fighting the urge to tell him he's doing it wrong. (I mean seriously Leah, how can you wash a floor mat wrong, cut the kid some slack)

When I come back out he is just finishing up rinsing it.

"Oh hey Mom," he greets me, with his best Thomas the Responsible Preteen voice, "I'm almost finished washing the mat. But I bet you are wondering why I changed the setting on the hose." I wasn't, I was actually wondering how he managed to get more water on himself than on the mat and driveway combined. "Well you see, we started out with mist, and that was all well and fine and all, but once we started scrubbing up the mess with the soap and the brush, the mist wasn't going to wash all the soap off the mat, and what it DOES wash off isn't going to take the dirt with it. So I switched to the full setting. This setting lets me get straight to the soap and dirt and get them out of the carpet but it doesn't blast the carpet into smithereens like the jet setting would do. It's just like Pastor Brian was saying at church this morning. When you are dealing with people in community, sometimes things get messy, just like when I dropped the tea in the car. So you have to help them clean it up. But you can't just dance around the problem they have and you can't just blast them with 'you need to do this to fix your problem, so just do it'. You have to use the right setting to help them clean up their mess."

When did he grow up so much?!

I am so very thankful that God has placed us where he has, in a community of believers who love my family and pour the truth of the Gospel into them. Who invest their time and talents into us. And who aren't afraid to use the full setting to help us get the sweet tea out of our floor mat lives.