Plague of Froggy

 You can learn a lot from your children. Most of the lessons are excruciating however and you'll need a good supply of pain reliever. Pride is usually what your children chew up, swallow and leave for you in their diaper. If  your children are potty trained however you'll tend to find it waiting to be dumped in the toilet... flush!
It was a Monday night and we had community group (Members of our church  get together on a weekly basis for fellowship and bible study). Almost all the members of our group have children so parents take turns watching the kids in a separate room. That night was our turn.
The night started out fine and really nothing happened that led to what happened when we got home. Being in a small room with seven children (I must confess that four were our own) must have been fuel to the fire. I have no doubt what, or should I say who, the match was for this fire. Lily, the third mini-horseman, screamed inconsolably for eight minutes of a ten minute drive. We've had this happen before. My wife and I are no strangers to our children's screams of unhappiness in the car. Jack once screamed for four hours out of five and a half on the way home from my wife's parents. This was different. To put it as plain as I can, Lily's screams could give smoke detectors a run for their money. It was after this short drive with the sounds of hell roaring from our soon to be two year-old's mouth that we came home to boiling tensions between my better-half and myself.
Getting four children ready for bed can be a hazardous job under these circumstances, all it takes is one rouge wave to capsize a ship. That one rouge wave's name was froggy. Froggy is Jack's stuffed toy that is his best friend. Sleep is unthinkable, long travel is undo-able, and careful deliberation is incalculable without the stuffed frogs bulging eyes to look on him. The realization that bed time was upon him came to our son's mind and froggy need to be added to his beds dressing. That is when it happened. Froggy was nowhere to be found. This has happened from time to time so my wife and I checked all his usual haunts. Below Jack's bed, behind the corner of our sectional, the chairs of our kitchen table, but still we could not find him. Bickering between my wife and I ensued as we told our son to go to his room and wait for us to bring him his friend.
I am not proud to say bickering turned into an argument about organization and if Jack was too old for a stuffed animal to be at his constant side. I argued that if he lost his frog then tonight was the night to say goodbye to froggy. My wife asked if I would be the one to get up with Jack and console him through the night ahead. I stupidly answered that no, I would not, I had to go to work in the morning (I really think we're pre-programmed with moronic things to say in arguments). It came to the point where I had had enough. I told my wife I was done looking, if she wanted to waste her night looking for the frog she could, but I was done and wanted to relax before bed (again, my brain and my mouth not work so good sometime).
As I was half-listening to my wife's response and in the process of sitting down in the recliner I was rolling my eyes. And as my eyes reached the apex of that roll this is what I saw:

Hanging from the ceiling fan was froggy. Our son had developed a habit of throwing the frog up there and trying to get him stuck on the fan, but it had been a couple of weeks since he'd done it, so it was off our radar as a usual place for froggy.
 The lessons our children teach us are never intentional, but the way God uses them are. Pride... flush!