Snow Days and Second Chances

Yesterday morning, my kids were playing outside in the snow, and I decided to take advantage of the quiet house to make a few important phone calls.

Fool. I forgot Murphy’s Law of Parenting, which dictates that as soon as you dial a phone number, a bomb of irritation and neediness explodes within the heart of your loudest child. Sure enough, as soon as the person on the other end of the line picked up, my son was at the back door, whimpering loudly. Horror of horrors, he had snow in his boot.

I gestured to the phone. He whimpered more loudly. I mouthed and mimed threats. He threw his boot at me. I gave him The Look. He started to scream.

Well, needless to say, the phone call didn’t go well, and my son’s snow day was cut short. He begged for a second chance, but I explained to him that life doesn’t always give you second chances. The phone call was over. Ruined. I couldn’t get it back.

But that’s when I remembered that moms have a superpower: creating second chances where none had existed before. So I told him that if he could be quiet while I made the rest of my calls, he could go back outside.

My son is young right now. I give him lots of second chances because second chances help him learn. Second chances are the training wheels of life.

I dread the day when the training wheels come off, and I can’t save him from his bad decisions. I think every parent does.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus highlights a reality that we often wish to ignore: at some point, we will run out of chances, and it’s not because God tires of giving them to us. It’s because a truly endless supply of chances would strip us of our free will. It would deny us the right of being taken at our word — and God respects us too much to do that.

My son saved his snow day. It’s a good reminder: take the second (and third and fourth) chance. Don’t wait for the next one. 

©LPi