"It's like the game Jenga but with dishes."
This is the picture and caption I posted
on my feed. To be fair, I had a number of those pots and pans
already in the dish drainer but I had more to wash so I just kept
stacking the dishes, instead of putting the dry ones away.
Like many women, I
spend a lot of time standing at that sink either loading the dishwasher
or hand washing what doesn't get loaded. I am the chief dish washer in
my house. And to be very honest, I resent it most every day. This is
not intended for shock value...I don't enjoy and love
washing dishes. I'm not giddy every time I see dirty
dishes laughing at me, mocking my free time. When I'm washing dishes I'd rather be doing anything else.
Except cleaning a bathroom. I would not rather be cleaning a bathroom.
All that said, I'm aware there
is another way I could look at the daily oppression of washing dishes.
When I was in high school I lived a couple of years with a family who
provided a home for me. My job in their house was Washing Dishes, it's
how I earned my keep. (If they had only known, my real talent is
organizing closets, tsk tsk such a shame!) I'm acutely aware that my
perspective can be easily skewed by the past. Or hormones. Or the snack I ate at 10 PM. So I consistently pray God will help me
to see things from his perspective instead of my own and this morning, a God glimpse came.
I stood in my son's room and stared at the Legos, all-over-everywhere,
resisting the urge to immediately organize pieces
by size and color. Does this picture look familiar? Perhaps you also
have offspring that is comfortable in this type of chaos and mayhem.
As I stared at this mess, a message emerged; this is his creative space.
Just the day before, I had tested him by giving him 45 seconds to run
to his room to get a specific minifigure. Two different times, with
plenty of seconds to spare, he knew exactly where Ultron and Deadpool
were located. It's certainly a mess but the message is; he has a place
to create and build and imagine. That is a good thing.
"What is the message in the sink full of dirty dishes?" Simply, we get to eat. Actually, we get to
eat from a bountiful harvest, that we had very little to do with. Can I
sidebar and mention how much respect I have for our Farmers? Utmost
respect.
Sometimes, our trash cans are overflowing
with the discarded food packages after preparing a meal. I want to
come unglued when our trash cans look like this. CanS-plural. We
have two trash cans and they both looked like this on the same day...deep breath. The message remains the same. We get to cook and feed our family. Sometime we get to
cook and feed our friends! What a privilege and joy!
My challenge to myself and for others is to continue looking for a message in the messes as we move through our days.
"16 “But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. 17 I
tell you the truth, many prophets and righteous people longed to see
what you see, but they didn’t see it. And they longed to hear what you
hear, but they didn’t hear it." Matthew 13:16-17
DoTK,
Julia Hull
This is our customary end of school picture of Nathan with all of his schoolwork, which does not include his homework papers.
