For the record, I would like to state that I hate doing dishes. I hate putting them away more than anything. Growing up, I didn't have a dishwasher so when I moved in with Dan, it was exciting that something else was doing the dirty work for me. The novelty wore off quickly, however. I am still thankful for my working dishwasher but I do not enjoy this task. It is definitely one of my top 3 most hated chores. (Cleaning bathrooms and endless laundry being the other two. I rarely clean bathrooms though.)
Every night when I load the dishwasher, I have a system in place to make it all fit. As a mom of four I am amazed by all of the dirty little cups that make their way into the sink each day. Seriously, so many cups. And Angus doesn't even use a cup yet. Soon I'm sure there will be blue superhero boy cups to add to the madness.
In order to make this crazy mess of cups, bowls, lids, spatulas and any other plastic thing that cannot be washed on the bottom to avoid melting and deforming fit into one load, the cups must go first. The giant daddy cups followed by the medium mama cups followed by the 52 little kid cups. Then I can throw in everything else on top of them. As long as the cups go in first, I'm good. I can get everything in. That's the only way it works.
There are days when I try to rebel and throw everything in there throughout the day because I just don't want to wait until the end of the day for all of the cups. On those days, I end up taking everything back out so that I can redo it the right way. Why I do this to myself I don't know.
Sometimes when I'm loading the dishwasher I am reminded that there is also an order in my life. God first, everything else second. As long as I am looking at His plan for me before my plan, it works. As long as I start the day with Him, it works. For example, if I don't take time to pray at least once a day, usually at 4AM when I feed Angus, I find that I am just an angry lady acting just how I feel without taking into consideration that God has asked me to be kind and loving, especially to my kids. And He has promised to help me with that as long as I ask.
Recently I started planning all kinds of things that kept me busy every night of the week, leaving little time for my husband and family. It wasn't until I acknowledged the Holy Spirit nagging my heart that I was able to see that I was being selfish. I had to give up some things that were fun and good but were not good for my family. God first.
The other day I was reminded that not everyone has Jesus in their heart. We have a very tough neighbor in our awesome community. This neighbor often stirs up trouble and is very mean and sometimes violent. Something happened the other day with this hard to love neighbor that reminded me that the devil is at work all the time. I started praying that this neighbor would just leave. I decided that I was done showing them Jesus as I had decided to do years ago when it became obvious they needed Him.
I searched the bible for passages that would support my decision. Passages that would talk about how it's okay to pray for your enemy to not be a part of your life. Surely God understands that sometimes it's better not to have certain individuals around me, setting horrible examples for my children and making my community unsafe. But I couldn't find anything that supported my thought on the subject. All I could find was passages that talked about how I should pray for my enemies and love them and let God take care of everything else. I figured I would keep looking because I didn't think that these passages applied to this particular neighbor. I actually asked one of my friends who used to be on the association board how we would go about removing someone from the community. I was on a mission. He reminded me that we can't just get rid of all the bad people in our lives. We pray for them and we show them Jesus. I was so annoyed because I knew he was right. God first.
This life thing only works when I let God lead. I have to put Him first. It's funny that I see that when I'm doing dishes every night. I'm thankful for those stupid little dirty cups that serve as my reminder.
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