Bad Mommy!

So, my son and I were supposed to go to our wonderful Riverbanks Zoo on Friday morning for a really cool program for preschoolers. I had been telling him about it all week. I had him all ready to take his beloved stuffed puppy, because the program was a "teddy bear clinic" in which the kids learn how the vets care for zoo animals, and they also get to learn to "take care" of their own animals. As I put him to bed, he told me how happy he was that he was going to the zoo with his puppy in the morning.

It was then that it hit me: I had not registered for the clinic!

Of course, when I tried to register us online after he went to sleep, the clinic showed up as "unavailable." After an e-mail and early morning phone conversation, still the clinic was "unavailable" to my son and me.

Sigh.

He was disappointed when I told him the next morning, but we still went to the zoo and took his puppy dog. We still spent the day together, and everything was fine.

But it got me thinking...

I messed up.

We humans do that...quite a lot.

We are not God.

We are imperfect.

On Sunday night, the Confirmation class of one of my churches and I discussed one of the prayers of confession in our hymnals. One of the things that we don't do enough in general, I think, is confess our brokenness and ask for God's help.

We like to think we have everything under control in our lives. We like to think we are capable of holding it all together all by ourselves. We often even choose to believe that we have power to control not just our own lives, but the world around us, too.

We forget that we're not the Savior. We forget that we're not God.

That's not a good thing to forget. I'm glad that every once in a while, I get a reminder. I mess up good (or rather bad). And then I thank God for divine mercy and forgiveness. And I ask for help from the Holy Spirit to do better. And I remember that I can't do anything without God's help. Because I'm just a broken human being.

Say it with me...I am not God. I am not the Savior. But with the Savior's help, I can do whatever God asks of me. Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Amen.