Message in the Mess

This week's blog is delayed because I had a more important priority. We just dropped off our son for Navy basic training.  The laundry, sweeping, dishes, vacuuming were all put on hold. Instead it was helping our sailor sort and pack up his belongings. The rest of our time was spent loving on him. We played video games. We played Dutch Blitz. We took a trip to the new local ice cream shop. I enjoyed each of these moments. However I had the most fun making a fantastical mess of our backyard.  I started a tradition of buying everyone in our family a can of goofy string. My family quickly learned that a can of goofy string woukd be in Christmas stockings and Easter baskets. I made it a point to buy orange for my husband, green for our eldest son, blue for our younger son, and purple for myself. Last night it was finally time for our family goofy string war.  We stood about 5 feet apart in a square with a can of string or two aimed at the closest family members and the ...

Last week my husband and I had a going away party for our eldest son at my sister's house.  I took my two sons over to her house Thursday and we set to work cleaning the party areas with her and her sons.  The food was going to be on their deck so we were trying to get the sliding doors to the deck clean. My sister's house has two sets of glass sliding doors about 6 inches apart with a screen between the sets. The dilemma we faced was the screen door and outside glass sliding set were off track, they were stuck. I am going to be frank in this blog, you may even find it offensive.  We are like those doors. We are stuck and it is keeping us dirty.  We have become stuck on ourselves, on our opinions, on our feelings.  Our current culture has embraced the spirit of offense.  We are offended by people who dare disagree with our opinions and by the suggestion that we change to agree with them or even listen to them objectively. Like the doors at my sister's h...

Saturday I had the house to myself.  It was time to scrub the shower. For the last month I have been eyeballing the grime and soap scum clinging to our shower walls. It was bugging me, but I was too busy to get to it OR I was free and my husband was sleeping in the next room. The irony makes me chuckle. I was climbing into a dirty "room" to get clean. It made me think.  There's more, vacuum cleaners, brooms, mops, sinks, dishcloths, and the pumps on hand soaps are usually the filthiest thing we own--and they are all what we use to clean. Then I started to wonder if this irony existed in my spiritual journey as well. Am I trying to clean with dirty tools? The answer is yes, I am. I have even taught children about salvation using a dirty/clean analogy. About 2 summers ago I taught my daycare children that sin was the nastiest, stickiest mud and it covers us. Then I explained that Heaven was like a giant bright white room.  Inside this bright white room was God and w...