I am so thankful to be a stay-at-home wife and a Mom. However, there are those chores during the day that sour my attitude...namely dishes, laundry and cleaning up the kitchen.
I think the reasons those particular chores annoy me is that they never seem complete. My joy at having accomplished the task is always short lived because a few hours later I find myself doing them again. Redundancy and the feeling that I am 'wasting my time' work together to make me less than joyful as I go about my work.
This afternoon as we returned from church and lunch, I walked in to find powdered sugar all over the counter and the floor. In our dash to get to church on time I had not had time to clean up the kitchen. Much to my dismay, no little elves had appeared to spit shine my home in my absence. There it all was, awaiting my return.
It caused me to think about all of the unresolved stuff in our lives. You know, the stuff we are just sick of dealing with...so we dash away without looking back, attempt to put it out of our minds and move on to the next thing. Then, one day, we have to return to 'that place' and we realize the mess is still there...just as we left it. Sometimes worse. Rotting, smelly, decaying, messy.
I was thinking about all of this as I scrubbed my counters and swept the floor. I thought of the messes in my life that God has been faithful to clean up. I thought of the sin from which He has washed me clean...and those sins that routinely make my heart messy and lead me to God over and over again to be cleansed. I prayed for those things in my children's and my husband's lives--the ones that are evident now and the ones that are to come. I thanked Him that He does not close the door and run away to let me sit in my mess.
Before I realized it, I was humming:
Purify my heart, let me be as gold and precious silver.
Purify my heart, let me be as gold, pure gold.
Refiner's fire, my heart's one desire is to be…holy; set apart for You, Lord.
I choose to be…holy; set apart for You, my Master,ready to do Your will.
Purify my heart, cleanse me from within and make me holy.
Purify my heart, cleanse me from my sin, deep within.
Then I marvelled at a God who can speak to this sometimes ungrateful housewife, even as she cleans her counters for the umpteenth time. What a loving, gracious, patient Father we serve!
9 comments:
Wow Jen! You really nailed that one! I felt like I was reading from the pages of my own life! Thank you for ringing such a positive spin on a familair feeling!
Be blessed,
EMC
I stumbled upon your blog from Kelly's page. Thank you for your post today. It touched me in a way that I cannot express other than to say, I NEEDED THAT!
you're right...it's those chores that we have to do multiple times a day that really wear me down! i try really hard to at least clean up the floor & table and the "last meal we had" dishes before we go anywhere so i don't have to feel "that feeling" when we return home to it. this was not one of those mornings, though...we were running so late to church i had to leave it behind! yuck. :0)
Purify my heart. I have sung those words so many times, but reading them in print reminded me of what I daily need to ask for. Thank you Jen.
angela
Great thought while cleaning! I am usually wishing for those fairies to arrive, but every once in a while stumble upon thoughts like this. Thanks for the awesome refresher!
I have been reading your blog for awhile and I didnt have a blogger account of my own so I never really stopped and said hello. But I just finally created one and I thought now was a good a time as any ;) I have been going back and forth about staying home with my daughter because being away from her is so hard. But I can appreciate the fact that if I was at home all the time I would be longing to get out of the house or be done with the never ending list of chores. You and your family seem so sweet.
Thanks for a great reminder.
My husband feels the same way about the dishes and cleaning the kitchen as you do! So he choses to avoid it and leaves it for me after I work three long days. We have had several "discussions" about this! I don't think he gets it yet! Thank you for the spiritual analogy to this.
God has been dealing with me a lot on looking into my own life and having Him remove the chaff and dross. May we reflect who HE is in ALL we do! As moms it is sometimes so difficult to live in the monotony of cleaning the house all the time or reminding the kids of the rules etc. My attitude gets poor when I find the kids over and over again have broken the rules or not cleaned up to certain expectations. God has had to remind me that I too am a mess and continually make the same mistakes over and over again. May He purify our lives so we can be holy as He is!
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