I stepped into the third-floor bathroom that my kids use and I had to pinch myself. Somehow, I’d been transported to a gas station restroom off I-95. Yes, it was that scary.
It had happened overnight. The Crusader cleans it weekly, and we lead the whole crew on a bedtime pass-through, picking up towels, screwing on toothpaste caps, gathering dirty laundry, and generally fussing and pointing. But this morning, the bathroom looked like squatters had sneaked upstairs and washed up after living outside in the woods somewhere.
Someone once told me doing housework is like putting beads on a string that doesn’t have a knot at its end. Usually, while I’m dutifully cleaning one floor the crew is wreaking havoc on another; just as I rinse and dry the last dish someone smears peanut butter and jelly on the counter. As I hold up my tiny umbrella under the deluge of Niagara Falls, I often ask myself, what’s the point? Instead of picking up after my crew I could put my time to better use mowing the lawn with my nail clippers. Sometimes it just feels like time wasted instead of invested. Can I hear an “Amen”?
There’s a lot to be said for housework. I love it when everything is in its place. Housework means sweeping, which feels as soothing as using a new crayon to fill in a blank page in a Mickey Mouse coloring book. But it also means dusting, and I put dusting in the same category as a root canal (I’m sorry, Mom. I know you can empty a can of Pledge like nobody’s business.)
So, what is the point?
The Crusader asks me this same question about doing inverse functions in pre-calculus. Why learn how to do a function and then its inverse? He can write his way out of a paper bag; he can look at a word or an idea from different angles and even convince you that Dora the Explorer is an animated treatise on heroism. (He actually did this.) Math, on the other hand, is either right or it’s wrong. Like housework. It’s either clean or its dirty. You’ve either vacuumed or swept or dusted, or you haven’t.
I googled all these sites that point out the practical reasons behind doing functions, and I learned that you can’t measure an earthquake or use a drink machine without using f(x)=y. This didn’t help. The Crusader likes drinking milk and he’s not planning to move to the West Coast. Mainly he’s not impressed because he still had to do it. Met with his blank stare, I explained that, even if he himself never used his knowledge (and I thought I never would either, but here I am homeschooling, using all kinds of random information I never thought I’d use), doing math problems like these strengthens mental muscles. Eventually, I stuck to the tried and true: “Because you have to and it’s good for you.”
Again, like housework. There’s just no getting around it. It’s necessary. I mean, nobody really wants to use a gas station bathroom, especially in her own house.
I have to say that sometimes I look at God like He’s a pre-calculus problem or washing dishes, like He’s something I have to do. There’s Bible study with the kids (check), private devotion (check), intercessory prayer (check). Those done, I’ve still got the deep cleaning to do: loving, serving, obeying, trusting. Sometimes just smiling first thing in the morning is too heavy a cross to bear.
But it shouldn’t be. Jesus did all the doing, didn’t He? The dying and the saving, the forgiving. He came to serve and to bear the cross. I have a friend who lives that out for me. It’s not like she grins and bears it, because she doesn’t see cleaning up after her five kids as something to bear; she sees it as an opportunity to serve. I, too, should look at every dirty toilet, every smudged floor, every unanswered math problem as an opportunity for God and me to roll up our sleeves and get to work. After all, at the end of His doing, I got a clean heart. A “right spirit.”
Just like math and chores God is pretty black or white; I believe or I don’t. I’m a sinner or I’m saved. Heaven or hell. It is that simple. I like the end result—a clean house, a clean heart—and yes, sometimes I think my doing is tough. I just hope God doesn’t look at my heart and see a grimy, oft-used highway restroom where He’ll have to use a whole roll of paper before hitting the road as soon as possible. I pray that my outpourings of faith and praise keep my heart and mind not just neat and tidy, but as cozy and welcoming as my sofa, so He will take off His shoes and tuck His feet under His heavenly robes and sit and stay a while.
“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
Make me hear joy and gladness,
That the bones You have broken may rejoice.
Hide Your face from my sins,
And blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence,
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.” Psalm 51:7-11
I wish that I was there to lend a helping hand.How you manage to do it is is a blessing.The sky is the limit for you.
All that I do learned from you! You set the standard.