Life is messy

Well, true to my previous post, I have been spending a shameful amount of time in Home Depot and an obscene amount of money. Once we started moving our things into our house, we realized that it was horrendously dirty and began cleaning and ripping out old shag carpet. We originally thought the carpet was brown, apparently it was supposed to be peach. So, we've been redoing hard wood floors this past week, and didn't officially move in until yesterday.

Today I began cleaning out the master bath's shower. For a little bit of background, the couple that owned this house before had been old and deteriorating in health over the last few years. The wife passed a few years back, and the husband from Parkinsons in just the past few months. The shower stall I cleaned today, looked like it hadn't been cleaned since the wife had been in good health. I'm not faulting the sweet family that lived here, it is after all a consequence of growing old, and I know they did their best while they could. But, tonight I had to scrape soap scum off of fifty year old tile with a knife scraper and heavy duty lime-away cleaner. It was so very gross! Really! I was trying to think of this terrible task as an honor in that it was a way to serve my family in love. I started thinking about how so much of being a woman is really messy and gross. First off there's childbirth, which, while a glorious miracle, is also icky and embarassing - during the delivery of my second, I was being wheeled into the delivery room and managed to announce to a very crowded hallway that I was pooping on the table :). Then there's our wonderful monthly periods, which make you feel completely unglamorous and like you want to shower five times a day. Then there's the poopy diapers we deal with on an hourly basis, wiping up toilets from potty training toddlers, spit up from our beautiful newborns, snotty noses that I'm still wondering when they start taking care of for themselves, and the list goes on. But, while these tasks look degrading and disgusting on the outside, they are just a part of the fallen world God has placed us in, and called us to be servants for our families. God promises that the lowly will be lifted high, and so it is in these seeminly base duties. While we are knee deep in soap scum and boogers, God promises that we are truly esteemed. It is a wonderful honor and privilege to love others in these tasks and part of our purpose on earth is not to run around with maids and nannies, but to glorify God by cleaning up messes.