That's Gonna Leave a Mark

Two, not one but two, of my boys are sporting Lego injuries. In all fairness to Lego, the bocks are not to blame as much as the operators, or in this case, the children living in proximity of said interlocking plastic brick-like objects.

The other day *N* and *I* were roughhousing a little bit. We do not encourage it, but apparently it's a testosterone thing, or they're just behaving like animals. I told them to stop. Really. The next thing you know, *I* is losing his balance and does a face plant into the living room carpet. Carpet, that's not so bad, right? It is if your forehead lands on a Bionicle mask with pointy things sticking out of it. (That would be it, at the top of this post.) Oh how the boy cried. We did not realize his forehead had become intimately acquainted with the aforementioned mask until we saw the lovely scrapes which matched the blue protrusions from the mask.

A day or so later, I was looking at *E* and said, "What happened to your head?" He had a scrape-looking think across his forehead, fairly thin and about and inch or so long. *E* put on his best sad looking face, which is good, he has a future on the stage, I tell you, and pointed to the boy wearing the other Lego scrapes. "He hit me with this." Apparently *I* got angry with *E* and whacked him with a Lego base piece. Aaw, isn't that the brotherly love we all dream about?

Sometimes weird stuff just happens. Fluke accidents and impulsive three year-olds keep my life interesting (and 6yos and 9 yos and 11 yos...). I wish they never got boo boos. I wish I could protect them from the emotional hurts that we all experience by living in a world full of other people who don't always think before speaking or acting.

I kissed their boo boos, and I admonished the wild boys to take a chill. I see the marks from the Legos and I think about how we are all marked by God too, as His children. Our marks are not visible like a scratch but they shine from the inside out when we share the love of God with all we come into contact with, through kindness and generosity, by being the hands and feet of Jesus in our daily life.

That's gonna leave a mark!