I Don’t Want To Clean (Wah!) The Reboot Day 8

If I don’t serve, I surrender.

I don’t want to clean, I don’t even really want to write about cleaning because cleaning, in and of itself, is boring to me. I’d rather do just about anything else other than clean. And when I think too much about all the cleaning I have to do, I surrender into an overwhelmed, selfish little hermit who just wants to curl up and pretend she doesn’t see the mess.

But

If I remember why I’m cleaning, if I remember how my God chose love through sacrifice, than I can climb out of that pit and choose to serve. The story below is a beautiful picture of a mother who chose to serve her child and sacrifice her own needs first in order to love her daughter well:

Finally, at 10:00, thinking about falling into bed just to stay alive, did I say, beyond weary to the bone, if possible,

when I passed Joy’s bedroom. (She was out at her very last speech party, with friends and comrades.)

Piles everywhere–strewn clothes on chairs, floor; shoes, speech ballots and paper all over the floor, dirty tea cups, plates with crumbs in them, and unmade bed with stuff here and there…….an overall mess…….

She was not being irresponsible, she had given her all–practicing, writing, dressing, running from room for room for giving over 30 speeches, adrenalin spilled, energy expended. Her bedroom was a reflection of our weeks.

If I were her, I would not want to come home to such a mess.

I know what it is like to return from conference weekends to a messy bedroom when you are beyond tired. It oppresses one to think of more work and more effort……

And so with one last weary push, I hung clothes, stacked papers into neat piles, picked up all the dishes, folded her sheets and covers into a straight and welcome turn down for needed sleep, placed shoes in the closet, picked up random things off the floor and placed beloved stuffed animals in the proper place of old, when she as a child loved their welcome.

When she returned at midnight, she would see love all over her bedroom, a little more ordered place, where rest would come more easily, because I needed to do unto her as I would have her do unto me–if I had been so weary and in need of an angel to straighten my room.

Please read the whole post over at Sally’s blog, I Take Joy.

Isn’t that just it? A losing of ourselves to love others. Yes.

I want to be that, I want to be the woman who loses herself in Jesus, who lays down her life to give life to others.

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