When I walked into the house, she announced, “I made a mess.” I just looked at her, smiled, and followed her gaze to the hallway floor. It was covered in chalk.

We have a large adhesive chalkboard on the pantry door. We use it to write down our schedules for one another. My daughter reached up to retrieve the box of chalk from above the pantry door, and it fell out of her hand crashing onto the tile floor. Tile is obviously more solid than chalk. It was an accident. Pause and place a hold on your immediate reaction and wait to respond.

Some of our most magical moments began as a minor disaster.

Stepping over the mess, I walked into the bathroom and noticed one piece of chalk laying right inside the doorway. Squatting down, I grabbed the chalk, and wrote a note on the tile floor. My daughter laughed and wrote a note on the tile in the hallway.

My daughter would have cleaned up the mess before I returned home, but it had just happened as I pulled into the driveway. When she moves on with her life, and has children of her own, my hope is she’ll remember that accidents are a part of living. When life gets messy it’s up to us to make it beautiful.

Feature Photo by Steve DiMatteo on Unsplash