What Kind Of Crap Are You Carrying?

"You've got poop in your hair," my five year old son said, pointing at me.
"What? Where?"
"All over in the front Mommy."
I of course, ran to the bathroom and tried to see what he was talking about. I'm usually the first person who forgets...I can't see anything when I look in the mirror. So, as I'm squinting at the little bit of color and hazy form that is my hair, my mind is trying to figure out how in the name of all that's sane, did I get crap in my hair.
After about forty five minutes in a hot shower, with twelve different bottles of shampoo. I still hadn't figured it out. That evening I took my two oldest boys to Newborn I.C.U. to visit their newborn baby brother and the truth came out.
Kaison, my youngest, was born 8 weeks premature and popped his lung less than 24 hours after his birth. He spent 5 weeks in post natal intensive care; getting fat and healing his lungs.
Every morning I'd go to the hospital, about five blocks from my house, to feed him, dress him, hold him, and pretty much get my baby fix for the day. I'd been on bed rest with him for 6 weeks prior to his birth, in a room down the hall from where he now lay in an incubator. Tearing myself away from him to care for my other kids and heal from the c-section i had was bad enough. This daily care routine kept me going when I felt like a failure in every other way. When we returned to N.I.C.U. that night, the nurses told me what happened when I'd changed his diaper that afternoon.
Kaison had what was known as a 'code brown". He'd exploded brownish-greenish poop all over his bed, his clothes, and his body. The nurses offered to clean him up for me, but I wanted to do it. Caring for him in these simple ways were the rare opportunities I had to be his mother while he was in N.I.C.U. While the nurses changed his bedding, I proceeded to strip his soiled clothes, diaper, and booties off of him. As I concentrated on keeping him safe, cleaning him up and bathing him, I used my hands to find where he needed washing and what needed to be cleaned. My long hair often drifted into my face as I worked and I tucked it behind my ears while diapering, dressing and putting  him back in his bed. When he was finally back asleep, I went to the bathroom and washed my hands. For another hour or so I held him in the recliner next to his bed. I left the N.I.C.U. waving to the nurses and visiting some of the other Mom's and babies I knew there. I proceeded to walk home, stopping to visit with my neighbors and friends and giving updates on Kaison's progress. All with baby poop in my hair.
It's not a strange thing for me to do embarrassing things. Luckily I can laugh at myself or hide in my room if its too bad. Being literally blind to people's reaction's to my having poop in my hair saves me from making too big of a deal over it. Maybe, I do myself a disservice though. If you think about it, we all, spiritually, have poop  in our hair.
We pretend its fashionable or trendy sometimes. We tell  ourselves its okay because other people with the same poop in their hair say its not there. We even decide we like it there just to be different.
The truth, though, is it doesn't matter what perfume we use to disguise the smell, or what hair clips or floppy hats we cover it with. We all still have crap in our lives. The Savior's atonement is the hot shower and shampoo we all really want to rid ourselves of it. Instead, we talk about how he loves, accepts, and understands the load of crap we embrace and carry around. Don't get me wrong...he does. Just like my friends, neighbors, the nurses, and even my kids still loved me. However, just because He loves and  accepts you, dirty and poopy, doesn't mean He doesn't want to wash away the things that are toxic to your happiness. Sin is like that though, easy to smear throughout your life while working hard and trying to be happy, and a stinking mess no matter how much you're loved while in the middle of it. so, don't carry around the crap you've inadvertently combed through your hair because you're too embarrassed to admit its there. Eventually some one will come to you and point out "You've got Poop in your hair." Hopefully, its someone who loves you. Hopefully you don't look back and wonder why you wasted time carrying crap.