Category Archives: patience
Knee deep in thankfulness
I’m thankful for laundry.
I never thought I’d say it–much less write it–but I’m thankful for laundry today.
As I type, my bedroom floor is covered in 2-3 foot moguls of laundry. Occasionally, as I step through it, a hidden boy or a dog will yelp and dart out of the room. Most days, putting laundry away is my least favorite thing to do. The task is just so vain and never-ending. Like Gremlins, laundry always comes back. Always multiplies. Always overwhelms. Even when I think I’m done, my husband decides to clean his side of the closet and then there it sets, another full basket of dirty laundry.
Sigh.
This afternoon, though, I decided to try to think different about my laundry. A paradigm shift, if you will, of a seemingly meaningless, perpetually monotonous and mundane task. So here it is, my laundry list of laundry thankfulness:
1. I am thankful my laundry exists because God has blessed me with a house full of people who wear it.
2. I am thankful my pile of laundry exists because the people in my house are healthy and run around dribbling, spilling, goobering and slobbering all over their clothes, which is why it needs washed in the first place.
3. Separated out, each individual in my family has their own individual pile of laundry bigger than the pile of clothes other entire families have to wear between them. Thanks, God, for giving us plenty to wear, and then some. Spur us on to share.
4. My sons’ socks are dwarfed by my husband’s. This reminds me raising little boys and having them here in my home is a brief, scintillating and special time.
5. One child prefers all white underwear. Another prefers boxers. Another prefers skivvies with animated characters on them. This makes me thankful for how uniquely God gifted and created each one of them.
6. I am the only one in my home who requires skirt hangers. This reminds me how grateful I am that I do not have daughters. (Call me crazy, but I’ve always been over-the-moon about having all boys!)
7. I pair and fold my husband’s black dress socks, and I am grateful he has a good and steady job to wear them to each day.
8. I hang my husband’s dress shirts, and I’m so grateful he works so hard for us every day.
9. I hang my husband’s golf shirts and am thankful he is healthy and able to play and have leisure time that he loves.
10. I set aside a few little boy tees that are too small for anyone in this house anymore, and I am thankful I have enough that I can give things to others.
I folded all that laundry and thanked God for each person in my family . . . that they are alive and well . . . that I can put the clothes away in closets . . . that they will have another day full of life to live and wear them. I thanked God, and I said a prayer and shed a tear for the families I know who have lost husbands and fathers, children and wives . . . families faced with a closet or basket full of laundry for someone they’d give anything in the world to see wear it all again.
So you see, today I am thankful for my laundry.
What are you thankful for today?
Those who stay the course
***written for the One Word at a Time Blog Carnival today***
Even though he’s getting up there in grade school years, one of my sons still brings Frog and Toad books home from the school library. He renews the same one, over and over and over again.
And each time I see that Frog and Toad book in his backpack my heart twists hard in my chest.
Because someday–a someday I’ll never be prepared for–he won’t want to check Frog and Toad out again.
Sigh.
I love Frog and Toad.
Because my son loves Frog and Toad.
But also because a lot of wisdom is packed into those short, simple Frog and Toad books. Stuff like enjoying the day, sitting with a friend, waiting for a letter, raking leaves, waiting for seeds to grow, and trying not to eat a whole batch of cookies. Even reading a book together.
In my 1975 version of Frog and Toad Together, I found the page where Toad writes out “his day:”
A List of things to do today
Wake up
Eat Breakfast
Get Dressed
Go to Frog’s House
Take walk with Frog
Eat lunch
Take nap
Play games with Frog
Eat Supper
Go to Sleep
Could be our lists, too, right?
I think God’s teaching me what Frog and Toad already know about patience: that joy comes in the waiting. In the perseverance. In the hope of daily tasks.
Too many times I sit and stew or pace and wring my hands (and heart) when God is clear about waiting for something. Too many times, I want the easy, quick, painless way out, but (if I’m wise enough to wait for it) I feel God’s hand press gently on my head and whisper, “Wait. Just wait.” Too many times, I’m like Sarah, wife of Abraham, who didn’t trust God enough to wait, took matters into her own hands, and completely screwed up her life and the lives of generations to come. (See Genesis 16.) Or I’m like Saul in I Samuel 13, who lost his kingship because he didn’t wait for God. As a result, God gave the kingship to David–a man messed up, but a man after God’s heart.
Not only do we mess things up when we’re impatient . . . oh the things we miss along the way!
We miss reading a story one last time to our child; we miss the beauty of a walk to a friends house; we miss the intricacy of God’s creation in a pile of leaves . . . and on, and on, and on.
I think James sums it up pretty well, when he says this:
“Meanwhile, friends, wait patiently for the Master’s Arrival. You see farmers do this all the time, waiting for their valuable crops to mature, patiently letting the rain do its slow but sure work. Be patient like that. Stay steady and strong. …Take the old prophets as your mentors. They put up with anything, went through everything, and never once quit, all the time honoring God. What a gift life is to those who stay the course! You’ve heard, of course, of Job’s staying power, and you know how God brought it all together for him at the end. That’s because God cares, cares right down to the last detail.” (James 5:7-8, 10-11, TMV)
Be encouraged as you wait, friend.
Look for scintillating smidgens of joy today.
Don’t fear the waiting.
Who knows what glorious things God will bring you there!
The three-legged race
I hate waiting.
Who doesn’t.
Yet time and time again, I find myself in situations which require waiting.
Patience.
Perseverance.
When I started therapy to heal wounds of abuse, I figured it would last six months and I’d emerge a shiny, happy new person.
Five years later, I’m changed, alright.
Shiny and happy? Those moments are fleeting and elusive. More like stronger. Braver. A little more capable of intimacy. And maybe . . . just maybe . . .
. . . a little more like Him.
Looking back, I’m glad for those years. If it weren’t for the darkness of them, I would never have seen His brilliance bursting through the cracks in my life.
I wanted to see Him–and all of Him–instantly. But He knew better. In His infinite wisdom, as they say. He knew small, scintillating slivers of Him was all my tattered heart could take . . . and all my tattered heart needed . . . to take the next step . . . and the next . . . and the next one after that.
I don’t mean to imply God holds a carrot out in front of us to get Him to follow His will. No, my God is way too good and big to taunt and tease. Indeed, I believe my God aches for healing and wholeness as much as I do. I believe He yearns–even holds Himself back–to plunge His mighty hand through the veiling clouds of humanity and heal us instantly, like the blind and the deaf on dusty Damascus roads.
But in His infinite wisdom, He knows goodness and mercy . . . character and perseverance . . . hide like Forget-Me-Nots along that dusty road . . . the splendor and redolence of which is only espied on detours and slow pilgrimages.
“But when it pleased God . . . ” reads Galations 1:15. When “it” pleases Him: our bending toward Him; our remittance of self; our willingness to give up the ugly things which bind us and submit our bloodied ankles and wrists to His nail-scarred touch.
Qavah is the Hebrew word for this waiting. This expectation. This looking for Him in the cracks of our lives. Interesting that a second meaning for qavah is “gather, bind together, wind together.” I’m no theologian, but I believe it means as we wait, He waits . . . His heart throbs with ours . . . He is entwined in even our smallest twinges of pain.
Like a three-legged race, He’s in it with us. And at the finish line, surely He will collapse alongside us, hold us as we gaze at the clear blue sky and laugh . . . and laugh . . .
. . . and we shall laugh . . .
