Blue Pen.

Blue pen.  Everywhere.  Ink up the sides, down the back, across the armchair, on the ottoman.  Scratches and blots of blue pulled across the white fabric in an array, pen still in hand.

The culprit sat, pensive to my reaction, his two year old legs sticking straight across the cushion, seated properly but now staring up at me.

I was furious.  Flustered.  How could this happen with me looking away for five minutes?!  He knows not to write with pen all over the furniture! What was he thinking?!

"Judah!  I'm so angry at you!  You know not to write with pen!"  I clenched my teeth, infuriated, defeated, and shock all mixed together, then grabbed his little skinny body and hauled him upstairs, dowsing him in his crib.

I came back downstairs to the crime scene, panicked about getting the ink out, and started stripping the furniture, spraying and scrubbing four different solutions all over the ink spots, and sprawling the soaking fabrics across the floor.

Bottles of solutions everywhere, paper towels and wet wipes and scrubbers around, plus the random kite and other knickknacks the kids yanked around and assembled in the front of the house.  I was defeated.  Five minutes of phone shopping turned into two hours of work: scrapping, cleaning, laundering, and then ironing this dumb fabric.

I texted Mark, asking for prayer over my frustration, my defeat, my attitude.  So much of the week was already emotionally weighty and draining, and I felt the tears roll down my face as the sadness lurked heavy in my heart.

I started picking up the scattered mess.  One piece of debris at time. One defeated step after another.

He wrote with pen in the chair because that's what he sees you and Mark do every morning. 

I paused and listened to the Holy Spirit pressing on my heart again.

He wrote with pen in the chair because that's what he sees you and Mark do every morning. 

I stopped and stood back, my heart listening and softening quickly, thinking back through the moments of the catastrophie before.  He had wrote with pen all over the chair, but the pen was in the air, and Camilla said something about him writing in dad's Bible too.

I picked up Mark's black leather Bible from the floor.  Sure enough, blue ink swirled around the front inside pages.  Then I looked behind me, where I completely forgot and overlooked that I had removed the colorful beginners Bible off his lap.  There again, ink scattered across the pages, some tracing over Camilla's pencil lines, and over the page he ripped out just yesterday, taped after his two year old fingers pulled too quickly over the page.  I picked up my copy of Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire and there too, his marks swirled blue across the inner pages.

He had been writing in Mark's Bible chair, with blue pen, in the books and Bibles, just like he sees Mark and I do every morning.

The Lord softened and humbled me, and spoke so sweetly to my soul that sobbed now for different reasons.  Because of the sprouts of the seeds we plant.  Because of every morning that Mark and I sit in our white chairs with our Bibles and pens and Bible Study books and materials, and because my son had saw what was important and followed our examples.

I choked back the emotions in my chest and texted Mark God's answer to my prayer of defeat, and the incredible tenderness of Him showing me what we didn't even know Judah saw every morning.  "God is showing me the opposite reaction to the white chairs.  Instead of him trying to do something wrong, he was showing the behavior that we modeled, sitting with the Bibles and wanting to learn what its like to learn about God!"

Tears blotted my eyes and I quietly, peacefully picked up the cushions and solutions and scrubs and wipes and sentimentally collected the chaos around from before.  But the Lord had spoken to me in this little storm, and softened me, and spurred both me and Mark on, to plant to seeds in the soil of their souls.

Blue pen marks and all.