Infinitely gross, but a good lesson

At 3.5, L is still in the process of potty-training. She was extremely resistant to the whole idea until June, when we finally had an "ah-hah!" moment. Since then, it's been hit-or-miss with actually making it to the potty in time. She knows that she gets in trouble when she doesn't make it, especially when she's just said "no" to several queries of, "Do you need to go potty?". As a result, she's taken to quietly changing her panties after accidents and never saying a word.

A few days ago I was in L's room and noticed some papers crumpled up on the floor. With brown stuff smeared on them. Nice. Apparently, she had had an accident of major proportions and had tried to take care of it herself. Lacking any TP or wipes in her room, she had torn pages from her notebook and tried to use that. Lots of pages. With an appropriate amount of groaning, complaining, and snapping at L, I followed the trail to her closet where she had stuffed what looked like a whole notebook worth of brown-smeared paper. I made L bring me the trash can and as I continued to pull out more and more paper and found brown smeared all over the carpet and the tubs of off-season clothing, I got madder and madder. I finally just spanked her and sent her to bed in a fit of grossness-induced anger. If she had just *told me* when it happened instead of trying to hide it, it would have been a whole lot less trouble for me and her!

After a lot of scrubbing and Lysol, I got to thinking. I know why she did it, after all, she *hates* to get in trouble and she gets in trouble a lot because she just can't resist the urge to do what she knows is wrong.

Then the bigger picture emerged. There are many, many things that I do that are just as disgusting to God as that poop-smeared paper. I know they're wrong and so I try to hide them, stuffing them out of sight even though I know God's gonna find out. In fact, He doesn't have to "find out", He was watching the whole time and I *still* did it ('cause I'm just intelligent like that). Even when God comes and cleans up my mess, He doesn't get mad, spank me, and send me to bed. He gives me another chance.

I figure L will probably end up in therapy one day complaining that her mom told such a gross story to the whole wide internet, but it was such a lesson that I felt I needed to share it. Even if it does make me feel like I need to pull the Lysol back out and go over everything again "just to make sure".