Yesterday I felt so accomplished because I got the toilets washed. Okay truth, I didn’t feel accomplished, I felt relieved. Like I’d just finished a midterm, or made it past the halfway point of a pregnancy, or picked the kids up from their last day of school before Christmas break. You know that crazy week before Christmas vacation when everything is happening all at once. Your kids are angels in the Christmas play and you have to make the costumes. The gingerbread house is under construction. Your church group is caroling at the nursing homes and you feel as old and worn out as those people you’re singing to that day. You’re supposed to be happy it’s Christmastime, but your life is in overdrive, and you just want to go bury your head in the snow until maybe April.

Actually, California has no snow, it’s past Christmas, past Valentine’s Day already, and I’m being dramatic right now. But we’ve had the flu at our house for weeks, sick kids, sick mommy, and there’s been so much to do before I head for D.C. on Thursday. Stock the pantry, finish the yard (we have a really big yard and the grass is growing like it’s June), wash the sheets, bathe the boys, redo my blog, and finish my book proposal. And a hundred other things that run through my head at night when I lay down to sleep.

So yesterday I started to prioritize because I knew I couldn’t get it all done before leaving. Grocery store, yes. Sheets no. Finish the blog. Wait on the book proposal. Bathe the boys…

Oh my word!

At the dinner table last night I realized I hadn’t bathed the boys in days. Wait, let me think about this… how many days? Has a week gone by? Are we possibly into a second week, already?

“When did you boys take a bath recently?” I asked in the middle of savoring my fried chicken. I love homemade fried chicken, the kind my grandma used to make with milk gravy and mashed potatoes. I made this special meal last night because I wanted to spoil my family a little before leaving on a jet plane. I’ve never left my little guys for more than two days and I’m going away for five so I feel bad. Plus I skipped Valentine’s Day this year. Just kind of pretended it didn’t happen. Nobody got candy. Nobody got a special meal made by Mommy. Or a sweetly wrapped treat tucked into their hands. If I plowed through the day fast enough, maybe we could just skip Valentine’s Day altogether this year. I’m taking the boys to the dentist today so skipping more Valentine’s candy three days ago seemed like a good idea.

Then I got on facebook to check my messages. All the pictures of the other mommies making their Valentine’s Day goodies. Not just for their kids, but for all the kids in the class. In the school. On the planet. These wonderful moms doing wonderful things for their own kids and everybody else’s kids, and I can’t even remember to bathe my boys.

The fried chicken lost all it’s flavor in my mouth. I lost my joy at the table. I couldn’t even finish my meal knowing our sons hadn’t been bathed in like a month or something. We have three bathrooms with tubs in them. The water all ran at once as I ordered the older boys to wash themselves in different showers and I put my two little guys in the tub.

“Can I do an alligator roll?” G2 asked with a big grin on his face, all his baby teeth showing as I poured soap into my hands to scrub his hair. “No, you are going to wash your fanny! And scrub your fingernails! And soap your ears! Let’s get this done, son!” And I’m thinking of all the things I have to do before leaving for D.C. and what a failure I am as a mother. Poor G2 lost  his smile as I scrubbed his hair and Cruz’s hair and ordered them to soap themselves and I thought What am I doing?! What’s wrong with a few alligator rolls in the tub? You have happy kids. They’re dirty as dogs, but they’re happy. Be grateful, and let them alligator roll, for goodness sake!

“Okay, now you can alligator roll,” I told G2 once he was clean. And a few hours later falling into bed after laying out chapel clothes for this Friday for the boys since I won’t be here to hand them their dress pants and collared shirts at 6:30 in the morning. After finishing the laundry last night and locking up the dogs and cleaning out the fridge because its been about a month since I cleansed it, too, I went to bed because sleep is a wonderful way to just forget about everything you haven’t done. All the ways you’ve failed as a mother or a wife or a Christian that day, that month, that year.

And I closed my eyes and thanked Jesus for my bed, my wonderful, amazing, utterly soft bed where I could just drift off and dream pleasant dreams about success as a mother, and a wife and a writer and a Christian, and then those faces suddenly came to me. Twenty-one men kneeling on a beach near Tripoli about to be beheaded. People of the cross, ISIS calls them. How I love this term: People of the cross. Twenty-one men martyred for Jesus and I can’t even get my boys bathed. And how can I go to sleep with those martyrs haunting me now?

Sleep finally came and this morning I woke up still in my funk. Still feeling like a failure as a mother. And a writer, too, because that book proposal isn’t going to get done anytime soon. And a bright beautiful morning disappeared into rolling fog. The day was clear when I got up, the stars out, and then the sun came up, but then gray rolled in, covering the brightness, that valley fog, and all that hoopla about Fifty Shades of Grey slipped into my thoughts as I started the laundry. Angst about how Christians are making this big deal out of this dirty movie and a guy named Christian with handcuffs, which just bums me out because Cruz’s real name is Christian and now our three-year-old son’s name has taken on a whole new context in our society.

And Christians on facebook and twitter are up on their high horses galloping through town like the cavalry over this movie as the world galloped away to theaters and spent millions while twenty-one people of the cross washed a beach Valentine’s red this weekend. And I couldn’t get my act together to do anything for my people on Valentine’s Day besides buying Scott and Luke new running shoes because they were a great deal at Sam’s Club on Friday.

But hey, I got the toilets cleaned.

And my blog is coming along thanks to my hubby.

Now I just need to redo my heart. Redo my attitude today. Maybe I should start doing alligator rolls in the bathtub because that makes G2 so happy.

“Where’s Mom?!

“Oh, she’s doing alligator rolls in the bathtub because she can’t get her act together. Because she’s failed as a mother and a Valentine’s giver and her boys smell bad and the refrigerator smells bad too and is growing fungus and if she reads one more story about Fifty Shades of Grey she’s going to handcuff herself to the bathtub and do alligator rolls for the rest of her life.

And the people of the cross–oh the people of the cross– washing a beach red makes all the other stories seem so insignificant. Makes my failure to bathe my children so insignificant. Makes a dirty movie making millions so insignificant. Because God sent us his own Valentine’s message this weekend. Twenty-one men dying in Libya because they loved Jesus. This magnificent Savior dying on a cross because he loves us. The call for us to die to ourselves and live and love like real Christians in a world of grey. Love bright red like the people of the cross on Valentine’s Day. On every day. Washing our toilets with love. Washing our children with love. Washing ourselves in Christ’s love.

Because I really don’t think love is grey. I think it’s red. Blood red. And I don’t think Jesus is disappointed with me for not bathing my children the past week or two. For not doing the whole Valentine’s hoopla this year. For not shaming Fifty Shades of Grey fans with fifty shades of my Christian opinion. I think Jesus is pouring out a hundred shades of red on me.

A hundred shades of red on you.

A hundred shades of red on Grey fans.

And I think those 21 men who died on the shores of Tripoli on Sunday are now standing on a bright and shining shore in the sweet by-and-by with their beloved Savior.

And all this makes me want to be a better Christian. To love harder. To live a hundred shades of red instead of beating people up with black and white. Or beating myself up because I forgot to bathe my boys.