Another Day, Another Flood.

We just flooded our second bathroom in less than a month.

The first was a surprise when I got home from a trip. "Guess what happened while you were gone Mom? Lucy overflowed the sink!"

The second was a different kind of bathroom flood - I'll spare you most of the details, but this time it was not the sink that overflowed, if you know what I mean.

When we moved into this house, all the bathrooms were carpeted in a light-beige (although maybe it was originally white) carpet. But given how much money we spent moving in and how we have really been trying to stay true to the "if we don't need it we don't get it until we have our financial goals met" model, the carpet was set to stay on my bathroom floors for at least a couple of years.

Do you ever have those prayers that you wonder if should really bother God with? I do - like "please let me get a close parking spot for school pickup today," or "if you could help me get this dinner on the table without burning it, that would be great." Well the older I get, the more I believe that no prayer is too small, because He answers so many of my insignificant requests. The lesson I'm learning though, is to be careful what you ask for....

Many times I can remember mentioning to God that it would be nice to have new floors in the bathroom someday. Someday. I didn't mean for our two-year-old to turn on the sink and leave it running until it dripped three floors to the basement. I didn't mean for our three-year-old to put almost an entire roll of toilet paper in and cause an overflow during what was supposed to be my nap time. But once I sopped up the mess, ripped out the carpet and sat back and thought about it, I looked up. "That's not really what I meant God - I could have waited another year or two and missed out on cleaning up that grossness."

I know you could argue that God has nothing to do with my bathroom floods, that it's just all circumstance. But I've seen too many of my prayers answered in unexpected ways to believe that it's a coincidence.

There was a time when a flooded bathroom would have sent me into mini-despair because of the money it costs and the stress that comes from an unexpected house project. But today I recognize that God doesn't answer my prayers in the way I think He should. He just answers them. It's taken years for me learn to recognize Him, but I choose to see God in these little things, because then He is easier for me to find during the really hard times. If I can spot Him in my flooded bathroom, then I know better how to find Him when the truly dark times arrive.

It is in the silence that I hear His voice, but I can see His fingerprints all over the messes of every day.