Grace: Undeserved Root Beer Floats

Last night's dinner was a low point in the day for me. Admittedly, my patience is at an all-time low, being more than eight-and-a-half months pregnant, and John had an event for work that kept him from joining us at home for our meal. I thought I'd try to keep the kids happy by feeding them a hodge-podge of random food I knew they would eat, and that would somewhat resemble a balanced meal to my conscience.

But it didn't seem to matter what I put in front of them. They were unhappy with it.

My charming son, who only touches macaroni and cheese one out of every ten times I offer it, was screaming for it just after his sister ate the last bite. My darling daughter, who asks for butter on every slice of bread ever put before her (thanks to Daddy), asked through tears why I buttered her bread when she really wanted it plain. And it spiraled downhill from there.

Let's just say that we used more tissues to wipe tears than we used napkins to wipe our hands. All three of us.

(I certainly won't win Mother of the Year award for admitting this, but I'm pretty sure there were a couple times, as we sat at the table together, when I plugged my ears to block out the crying-in-stereo.)

Somehow we managed to pull through. On my part, it included lots of counting to ten, deep breaths, and like I already mentioned, ear-plugging. But in the end, we ate. Something. Apparently it wasn't enjoyable, but we filled our bellies.

And at the end of it all, I was craving a root beer float.

I had a dilemma on my hands. In our house, you don't get dessert unless you finish your meal. Sometimes this involves some compromise, but behavior is also taken into consideration in this equation.

Clearly, neither of my children should have gotten dessert last night.

But mommy had a craving. And I caved.

I got out two miniature glasses, one large glass, vanilla ice cream, straws, and a bottle of IBC root beer.

As my children blew their noses and stared at me in disbelief, I proceeded to tell them about grace. God loves us far more than we deserve to be loved. We don't deserve anything good from Him, but because He loves us so much, he gave us Jesus and He gave us forgiveness. Just like this dinner, we didn't deserve a special treat at the end (none of us, honestly), but because Mommy loves her children so much, we were having root beer floats. Undeserved root beer floats.

Honestly, I have no idea if any of that sunk in, but I enjoyed introducing my kids to something I remember as a favorite treat from my childhood, and doing my best to turn it into a life lesson of some sort. Maybe the next time they have a root beer float, perhaps they will have a vague recollection of God's love for them--His sweet, amazing, overflowing, undeserved love for us.