Crumbology

Today I decided that I am in the business of crumbs.

There are the obvious crumbs of course. Bits of toast, Cheerio's, and Cheez-It's swept up several times a day. There are also odd, misplaced crumbs such as the rogue piece of popcorn I found in my bedroom yesterday or the half-eaten granola bar beside the toilet left by someone who decided to snack while they sat.

There are crumbs that have nothing to do with food at all. Toy crumbs, for example, like microscopic Legos or a Polly Pocket stiletto, the arm of a plastic T-Rex or the vinyl whiskers that fell off a miniscule cat.

While doing laundry today I discovered yet another classification of crumbs: laundry crumbs. Laundry crumbs add insult to injury for a laundry-phobe like myself. They are the little articles in the basket that sift to the bottom amid the larger items like t-shirts and jeans...tiny bits of my family's wardrobe that live to torment me. Sport socks for toddler feet, kid underpants, and tiny t-shirts. Much like a bag of potato chips, laundry crumbs sink to the bottom of the bin so that I am forced to reckon with the lot of them all at once.

Today was one of those days where I actually saw the bottom of the laundry bin. As I unloaded the dryer, I marveled that 52,174 items of clothing managed to sneak into just one load. One toddler sock is harmless enough but when they ban together, it's like some sort of evil laundry monolith sent from the devil.

As I stripped duvets and unrolled pillowcases from the kids' beds, more crumbs hit the floor. Plastic palm trees, a rock, a Barbie shoe. It's as if my children expect the Apocalypse and want to have some secret junk stashed away while the rest of the world goes up in flames.

The crumbs never end. But as I began to ponder their significance, I realized that crumbs tell us a lot. What do archaeologists do? They study crumbs. They dig up the scraps and fragments of former civilizations. Everything we know about history, we owe to crumbs.

So what would our crumbs say about us? I wondered. {Besides the fact that we have too many socks.}

From the laundry crumbs, one can assume that tiny people live here. From the table crumbs, one can gather that we like cookies. A lot. From the Lego appendages and the crayon shards under the sofa, one might guess that the tiny people are creative. From the paper crumbs, the tucked-away letters and journals, one would even learn that we have loved and sinned and suffered and been restored. That we still struggle...but we are not without hope.

In our crumbs, I see provision.

And so today, I celebrate the crumbs in whatever form they take. To sweep up tiny morsels and be grateful for cookies, to put socks in drawers and bless the tiny feet that fit inside them, to place Lego's in plastic bins and delight in the imaginative play that happens here, to reflect on our story and give thanks for redemption.

Here's to crumbs.

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Linked to "Tuesdays Unwrapped" {Chatting at the Sky}