It’s Friday morning, technically the ‘end’ of my laundry week and I can almost see the coastline of the land of “DONE” on the horizon.
I’ve tracked my loads this week, just to get an accurate picture of how much laundry we REALLY do every week. Monday – 6 loads, Tuesday – O (out of the house all day), Wed. – 8, Thursday – 4 loads….
I promise you, last night I fished around the house just looking for something else to put in the machine and there wasn’t anything. I felt as if, after folding and putting away the two loads in the washer and dryer I might actually be finished. Granted, I knew there would still be the clothing that the other 9 of my family members wore on Thursday, but I could handle that.
THEN it happens!
The testing of my patience begins, Friday morning I walk into the laundry room and see a MOUND of items on the floor. Three coats, one jacket, two blankets, and a six very large towels. By my estimates, it was at least another two loads that were NOT in my calculations!
Then it HITS ME….FLOOR ≠DIRTY!!!
I take a deep breath, attempting to practice self-control, and realize that it was my younger kids who were obediently doing the morning chores, who loaded up the laundry room floor. It must be that while they are singing playfully, and whistling while they work, and picking up the living room floor, that when they see ANYTHING on the carpet or bathroom floor, they immediately think “DIRTY”!!!
Why is this? Why do we think, that a fresh batch of clean towels, folded and put away neatly in the bathroom or linen closet, is instantaneously FILTHY after drying off a CLEAN body exiting the shower?
I don’t know, but absentmindedly I’ve been guilty for years of the same thing. Life gets hard, and I get depressed and end up on the floor. If I stay there, then I’m telling my maker, “I’m not really clean”. And just like those towels, if I stay down long enough I really WILL get dirty.
Eventually piled high with the stench of self-pity.
In my own spiritual laziness, I let things I know to be clean (my heart), lay under a pile of obviously dirty and soiled thinking, which in turn, makes the clean parts dirty. It is true, Jesus has made me clean and washed me white as snow, yet I still struggle with walking that out and not letting the world contaminate me or my thinking patterns.
I guess the Apostle Paul knew what He was saying when He taught in Gal. 5:9, “A little leaven, will leaven the whole loaf”, and in 1 Cor. 15:33 “Bad company corrupts good behavior”. Just like the Lord, he uses our laundry to teach us lessons about holiness and being separate. So the next sign going up in our laundry room will read. “SNIFF FIRST – FLOOR ≠DIRTY!!!”
Laundry Mom~Erin♥
