When Mystery Teaches a Lesson

The other day we solved the mystery of the missing clothes. Every few days, one of the boys would say he was out of clothes. We couldn’t understand it, but okay, I put a load to wash. Next day, the same thing. Okay, put another load to wash. Again, nothing to wear someone would proclaim. I thought, how can they be out of clothes? It just got washed, yesterday???

Well I’ve been busy with other stuff and just didn’t have time to investigate. Honestly, it was easier just to do another load of laundry than to find out where the clothes were going. So, I decided to finally go into the boys’ room and solve the mystery. Well we have 3 boys sharing a small closet that keeps all their summer and winter clothes. We live in a warm climate and you can never really put away your short sleeve stuff. We can have one day of 44 degree weather and the next day can be 74 degrees! Another topic completely.

I started pulling out clothes and found out that my oldest son’s clothes were falling off the hangers in the back of the closet. They were accumulating into a nice pile of clean laundry. My second son’s clothes were being shifted to the opposite side of the closet and getiing mixed up with his brothers’. Of course his brothers never mentioned or paid attention to that fact. He later said that he was wondering why every washing of his clothes resulted in less clothes.

The boys of course never bothered to really search their closet, it was much easier to announce being out of clothes. For me it was easier to just throw in another load than to search the closet. We were all shirking a job, hoping that someone else would get it figured out.  In the end, I’m not much different than my boys or should I say that they are not much different than their mom? Do you find that true for yourself?

This mystery reminded me about how I’m being an example to our kids even during the daily life stuff-when I don’t even realize it.  It’s a big task to be a good example to our kids, but it’s an even bigger task to remember we’re being an example all the time!  I have a lot of room for improvement, thankfully goofing up and making mistakes are great teachable moments.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.