Last week, while retrieving a container of yogurt from the refrigerator, I knocked a second one onto the floor. Oh! Suddenly, I felt wetness on my legs, shorts, T-shirt, and feet. Hmm! I knew what was ahead of me! Twenty-four ounces of plain, nondairy yogurt.

How should I clean my mess up?

Should I change clothes or clean the mess first?

Standing there, I knew there was no turning back. If I stepped away, then I’d track yogurt all over the kitchen and the carpet, not to mention my bedroom. Better face the music, or, in this case, the yogurt.

Taking a deep breath, I bent down and extended my fingers. Yep. There it was—the broken container, upside down, oozing yogurt across the floor. … Now, what to do?

Then I heard little clicking of paws. Ava had no problem knowing what to do. “Wow! I don’t know what this is; however, it’s sure yummy!”

“Ava, no!”

Ava’s response, “Yeah, right! This is better than a pair of socks and sunbathing altogether!”

Talk about a slippery mess! … Trying not to slide and fall, I went to the sink to get a dish rag. Cautiously and carefully, I got to the sink. Inch by inch, I made my way back to the spill. Kneeling in the gooey, slippery mess, now on my knees, I began to wipe. The more I wiped, the more slippery the mess became. Laughing and trying not to fall, I continued to wipe, slip, rinse…wipe, slip, rinse…wipe, slip, rinse. Before long I was slipping more than I was wiping. Slipping and slipping and slipping. My floor was now more slippery than an ice rink!

Then, in my infinite wisdom, I decided to put soap on the dish rag. That made the floor even more slippery. Laughing, sliding, wiping! More laughing, more sliding, more wiping! And still even more laughing, sliding, and wiping! Eventually, I got the floor cleaned up. Or at least I prayed I had. Who knows, there still could be yogurt on the cabinets!

As I changed out of my wet clothes, I remembered the quote from the Daily Word publication I read earlier that morning, “I am stronger than my fears and more powerful than my challenges.”

Hmm! … As I thought about the day, I realized the yogurt wasn’t the only mess I’d encountered. Technology wasn’t cooperating. My shoulder hurt. Plans unraveled. Nothing seemed to go quite the way I’d imagined.

Isn’t that how life often works?

Some messes are obvious. You can see them splattered across the kitchen floor. Others are invisible—disappointments, frustrations, unexpected detours, or people who cross our paths needing more help than we know how to give.

We don’t always get to choose our messes. We do get to choose how we respond to them. Sometimes laughter really is the best medicine. I needed that reminder.

Looking back, I suppose I had two choices that evening. I could grumble about the mess, or I could laugh while cleaning it up.

I chose the latter. The yogurt eventually disappeared. Life’s bigger messes don’t always clean up quite so quickly. Even so, perhaps the lesson is the same. We may not choose what spills onto our lives, yet we can choose whether to face it with resentment or with a smile. Sometimes the strongest thing we can do is keep wiping, keep laughing, and trust that eventually, one way or another, the floor will be clean again. And when we do this, we’ll discover we’re stronger than our fears and more powerful than our challenges. And that’s how, my friends, we change the way we see and change the way we live! ????