One of my kids wrote on my table. 

This might not seem like a big deal, and usually it’s not. Pens slip, markers bleed, and Magic Erasers do their work. I get that mistakes happen.

But this wasn’t one of those things. This was a signature, a sentence, a proclamation on MY table. The table I had worked hard on. My first piece of furnature. The work of my hands. 

And I was mad. 

I was mad because it felt like a shot. It felt like an insult. It felt disrespectful and hurtful. 

Because how would they feel? How would they feel if I took my pen and wrote over their creation? If I took what was theirs and claimed it as mine to do with what I would.

Yes, I was mad.

I wanted to get that kid and tell them what’s what.

I wanted to make sure they knew how hurt I was and that what they did was wrong.

I didn’t care about maturity or turning the other cheek. I felt like an injustice had been done and I wanted them to know about it.

My upset phone call to my husband sought commiseration and affirmation of my sense of being wronged. 

And he gently attempted to turn the ship.

Through his gentle intervention and wise words to both sides he brought the younger to a sense of repentance and the older to a place of offering grace and forgiveness. He’s a pretty amazing guy.

When someone hurts the work of our hands, disregards our creation, it wounds. 

It wounds us, and I think it wounds God.

For you created my inmost being;

You knit me together in my mother’s womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; 

your works are wonderful, I know that full well. Psalm 139:13-14

I know there have been times when I’ve hurt someone else, one of God’s fearfully and wonderfully made creation. 

Sometimes it’s intentional, sometimes an accident.

For my child, they thought it would be funny, a joke, to write their name on the table.

I’ve done that. I’ve made and misread jokes, hurt someone unintentionally.

I’ve disregarded feelings and opinions and left other people feeling like they don’t matter.

But just because it was an accident doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt. 

And I wonder what God thinks of it all. Actually, I don’t.

I have a pretty old idea of what God thinks and feels when I wound one of his beautiful creations. I bet, like me, that he’s angry, hurt that I did that. That he wishes I could see how much care and time he’s put into that person. That they are crafted in his image and he loves them to the depths of his soul.

Like my impulse with my child, he could be really tempted to show me my faults, to make me feel the full depth of my wounding of another person.

But he doesn’t. 

He shows grace to me. He forgives. He corrects. He gives me a new way of looking at things so that I begin to see the person through his eyes instead of my own. 

His wounds are much deeper than mine, because the cost was much greater.

But so is his grace. The deep and wide grace that sees me as his child and looks past my sin and to the love he has for me. 

Because I’m his creation too. The work of his hands. And this hands continue to form me and show me new ways to reflect who he is.

A I’m a Creation in Progress.