Clean-up in Aisle 9

The other day I was shopping with one of my teens, enjoying seeing what he slipped into our cart. We were humming along, making good progress, when I spotted a bottle of flavoring—spices blended with oil—for shrimp scampi.

I make my own shrimp scampi, not following a recipe, and my teens like it. But I’m always open to trying something new, so I showed it to my son—who gave it the thumbs up—and put the bottle in the cart.

If this were a movie, this is when the foreboding background music begins. Because I did not place the bottle in the cart securely. And a few minutes later, as I maneuvered around a corner, the bottle slid out of the cart, fell to the floor, shattered, and sprayed the contents everywhere.

You never know how much a bottle can hold until it spills, and—even though it wasn’t a large bottle, the mess seemed to spread far and wide. A man and woman coming toward me shrank back in such apparent fear that I went over to check on them. They were fine. Then I got the attention of the nearest store employee and told her what had happened.

She immediately radioed for help, and as they arrived, we continued on our way, back to our shopping trip. I felt guilty about the mess I had made and the work I had created for others.

Especially as we circled through the aisles and glanced back at the scene of the spill, I felt guilty that it was taking so much time for people to clean up. I would never have created extra work for anyone on purpose, and I wished I could help somehow. But there was nothing I could do. They had it well in hand, and I just had to continue my shopping expedition.

I was thinking of this last night when a friend reached out to ask for advice about an issue that she had unintentionally caused. She wished she could have prevented the incident and the impact. She could see ramifications I couldn’t see. And she was trying to figure out how best to address the situation—and move forward.

I kept saying, “It’s not your fault. These things happen. You didn’t want it to go wrong like this.” It was all true, but I wasn’t able to offer much in the way of comfort.

How often we create messes in our lives—whether we’re spilling something in aisle nine, hurting someone’s feelings, or taking a step that causes issues for others. We are humans living in a fallen world. We will stumble and fall. Sometimes it is our fault. Sometimes it’s not. But the sting of failure is strong. The burden of guilt is heavy—even when we didn’t mean to cause a problem.

If only we could more often give ourselves the grace we give to others. The people cleaning up my mess at the grocery store didn’t even seem upset in the moment. They have seen it all. They matter-of-factly found signs and mops and took care of it. No one has given it another thought since.

I imagine that’s how God feels about many of our poor choices and missteps and errors we never meant to cause. He is all loving and merciful. He knows our limitations, loves us even with all our weaknesses, forgives us completely, and—we hope—gives us a new day to try again tomorrow.

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