poopie play-dough and growing spiritually

It was something of a traumatic experience, mind you. Here's the scene: it was about 20 minutes before the last 'home gathering' started. Chrissy and I had been feverishly trying to get our house into some symbolence of order and it was time to wake up our two year old, Anabelle, from her nap.
As the door to her room swung open I was greeted with an invisisble fist.. or at least that what it felt like. The offactory lobe of my brain screamed out in revultion, my sense of smell was seared with a mix of the obnoxious odor of methane gas and general 'uck'. It seems that possilby 10 minutes into Anabelle's 3 hour nap she had 'poopied' in her pants. That was bad enough, but there was more.
She had apparently become facinated with her ability to make what she referred to as 'poopie play dough'. I know this is gross, but, over the course of her nap time-- when she should have been sleeping-- she pulled her poop out and began to fashion 'play-dough' like scuptures and to fingerpaint with her newfound artistic median.
Wow. What a mess. What a smell. Oh, my, its in her hair and all over her 'blankie' and between her fingernails. Oh wow, its 15 minutes before people begin to arrive.
Perhaps the toughest part of the whole situation is how well she'd been doing with her potty training. She had learned what to do, how to do it, and where to do it. She was a marvelous example of potty-training prowess. I mean she had skills!
And now, this. :(
Well, the home gathering turned out just fine and, after enough chemicals were applied to Anabelle's room the stinch subsided to tolerable levels.. and, of course, thankfully, skin IS washable.
Ok, what's my point (other than to gross you out!!)?

It reminds me of what spiritual growth can be like. We too can make big messes, sometimes at inconvinent times and in inconvient ways and sometimes on the heels of some great stride forward or victory.
I used to think that spiritual growth was a pretty straight-forward proposition: you pray, read the Bible, share your faith with others and, wa-la, you are a mature believer. Well, its true that spiritual growth does take place through all of the above, but its rarely the linearly upward well-paved path into ever growing episodes of triuphant victory that I once thought it would be. In fact, it sometimes seems as though for every victory I have, I end up taking two steps backwards in another area.
God has his own plan to grow us up. When God's children prosper one way, they are generally tried in another for few of us can bear unmingled prosperity without forgetting the Gospel.
Have you discovered some previously unconsidered area of filth in your soul? Have you run back to some habit or hangup that has ended up robbing you of your dignity? I'm thankful that we can bring our 'poopie play dough' to our Heavenly Father who will, in the Name and on the Merit of our Savior Jesus Christ, wipe us clean and give us another chance. Real growth is rarely easy, but it is, in Christ, a promise (see Phil. 1.6). Real people are messy. Maniquines are sanitary. There is no such thing as mess free ministry in the lives of real people. God is about making a core-level difference in real people, not just changing the window dressings without messing with the ultimate trajectory of your life. May you re-commit to take your messes to the only one who can clean them up.
Sola Deo Gloria
matt b.