A Revolutionary Concept

Just do it. No, not the Nike ad tagline. Just pick up that stray sock. Just put away those toys. Just empty the dishwasher. Just do it.

There, that's simple. You'd think it would be easy to encapsulate those three little words into everyday life. But in actuality, it's quite difficult. Because life intrudes, you see. Your daughter gets frustrated with her computer games, and demands your attention while you're dealing with the dirty dishes. Your son pulls himself up on the open dishwasher and tries to pull out every dirty piece of silverware he can reach. Your husband comes home and wants five minutes of peace and quiet before preparing dinner or entertaining the kids so you can prepare (or finish preparing) dinner.

It's a simple concept, but not that easy to practice. It's well and dandy to say it glibly, and even demonstrate it a few times in front of a perceived careless spouse. I do it to my DH, he does it to me. Sometimes we both get frustrated with each other over the gradual slide into messiness and clutter that we find ourselves enmeshed in on a routine basis. And like spawning salmon we struggle valiantly upstream, to be rewarded with a mostly clean house, and a week later we find ourselves sliding with the tide back out to sea again.

It's frustrating. It really is. I look at our behemoth laundry pile and whine to myself, "I just DID that." And every morning I grumble about the d@rn dishes. Why couldn't someone invent a dishwasher that puts away the dishes after they're clean...and while they're at it they could invent a machine to take the dirty dishes from the table to the dishwasher, I grumble to myself. And I get tired of doing the same things I do all the time, so sometimes, I just don't do them. And hopefully DH will step up and do them while I take a little "la la la" vacation from my usual chores, but usually not. And the same things happen with DH. He gets tired of doing all the stuff he normally does, he stops doing it and has his own "la la la" break, and we end up back out to sea in our messy cluttered house.

*sigh* It's a mundanity of life, and sometimes I get really irritated by it. But then that little voice inside me reminds me of how blessed I am to HAVE so much STUFF, and to HAVE enough dishes to go three meals without needing to wash anything...and well, I get my perspective reoriented. I just read an article about Burma and life in a refugee camp, and well, I am humbled by my poor spirit (and that's NOT poor-spiritedness in the Beatitudes way, either). Yep, I can (and often am) a pretty ungrateful bugger. I'm glad God hasn't washed His hands of me and all my grousing.