Party animals inTexas

I think I am having more fun than Amy as I am helping her clean and organize after her month in the hospital. I am trying to get her to just sit and watch me and rest. However, I am not sure it is restful for her.

For example, we have had an extended battle over an end table. I am certain that if we moved it 1 foot to the right, the couch would fit flush with the corner of the wall without sticking out an extra few inches as it does now. She won't even let me try and in fact threatens another pancreatic attack should I sneak it in that position while she is not looking.

“Can't we just go have fun?" she whined.
"This is fun," I warned her. At least it is as fun as I get.

The real fun was when I chanced upon the dead baby snake in the corner of the sun room. After I stopped screaming, we huddled together and gazed at the stiffly dried black squiggle.
"That's a worm," said Amy.
"No it's not! That is a snake- a baby snake."
Amy took a picture of the snake for her saintly husband, Jim.
When Jim came home from work, we showed him the snake.
"That's a worm,"he said.
I know everything is bigger in Texas but if that really was a worm, I sure hope I don't come across a Texas snake.

The rest of our cleaning proceeded relatively uneventfully. No more supersized worms or creatures lurked in hidden corners. And we both agreed the sun room looked sunnier after the worm/snake was removed and the day of organizing was coming to an end.

"Tomorrow, we get to do the kitchen!" I told her happily.
"My, you are a party animal!" She didn't exactly say that but I bet she was thinking it.

I have discovered it is much easier to clean and organize someone else's house rather than your own. It is also easier to do as I say and not necessarily as I do. However, I am so inspired by how nice a clean house looks that when I go home, I might even clean my own.

Psalm 18:20 NIV

The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness;
according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me.

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Cleaning from the Inside Out

Four grody, mud encrusted horse blankets hung over the fence. My job was to ungrody them. Jill gave me a hose and a horse brush.
"Just get them to the point that I won't be kicked out of the laundromat," she requested.

While Asherel has her riding lesson, peacefully rocking on the back of a warm, fuzzy animal with gentle brown eyes, meandering through a trail in the shadowy forest......I volunteer to do whatever disgusting jobs have accumulated. I love Jill and I love her vision for His Barn, a riding instruction farm that also gives benefits for Healing Horses Rescue, and looks at animals as gifts from God that we should cherish, nurture, and protect. So, I am happy to do what I can to help during that hour.

Horse blankets that covered horses all winter, that have been rolled in, sweated in, and rain spattered mudded on have a special scent all their own when dry. I cannot begin to describe the odor when wet. I thought I was getting off easy not being told to muck the stalls until the stream of water from the hose began to fully release the "eau de caballo" from within those blankets. And to scrub the blankets, I had to get my face right up to them so one hand could hold the flapping bottom taut while the other scrubbed.

"Well," I thought, "At least my arms are being toned for the sleeveless gown I will be wearing at Matt's wedding."
My sister Holly had warned me that old skin like mine is best seen covered. I can't wait til she is my age and I can repay all these loving comments she showers with regularity on her older sisters as though old skin is unique only to us. However, I do remember in my younger days watching older folks' flapping triceps jiggling like pancakes,  so I see her point.
"No pancake triceps for me," I muttered as grime and horse hair flowed away with the water. I had to keep switching hands to scrub because my jiggly triceps were actually getting pretty weary after just a few moments.

At first, I did just try to get off the chunks, but then something happened inside me. I was determined these blankets would look clean enough that perhaps the laundromat would not be necessary. My shirt and shorts and shoes were soaked with splotches of mud and horse detritus spattered all over me. My arms ached and I am pretty sure that passerbys were not calling Vogue to report a sighting of the next supermodel.  My old lady triceps jiggled and scrubbed, scrubbed, scrubbed. A horse fly bit me and left a huge welt, and still I scrubbed. Then I heard the voices of the returning riders. I turned off the hose, and stepped back to survey my handiwork.

"Wow," said Jill, "I was just hoping you would get off the chunks."
The four blankets, while not looking brand new, did look clean.
Asherel and her friend, Kathryn, who rides with her came over and the four of us gazed at the blankets, drying in the abnormally warm spring sun.
"Aren't they beautiful!" I exclaimed. The girls nodded, but didn't effuse the way one would expect over a minor miracle like this.

But I knew that this was a victory for me. I am a "just get the chunks off" kind of person. My sister Amy calls me a "surface cleaner".  My house is neat and organized....until you open a cabinet. We never do so unless we are swathed in full armor. Things leap out at us with astounding force. And I am sorry to say that this is probably a personality defect. It is hard to scrub beneath the surface. It is hard to look beyond what is obvious, and deal with what is hidden, til it is really clean.

I cringe every time I read Jesus' reprimand of the Pharisees.
"You clean the outside of the cup while the inside is filthy! You get off the chunks...but you leave the stains. After you clean the horse blankets, the laundromat consistently kicks you out."
He didn't mention the horse blankets, but the Bible is a living document that can fit any situation.
In actuality, Jesus was talking about souls. We look pretty on the outside....at least some of us do,( but no one over Holly's age according to her)......while our spirits are filled with corruption, deceit, and sin. Jesus doesn't mind us scrubbing off the chunks, but He advises we clean the inside parts thoroughly first. And He is willing to send His spirit along to help us. Since God is outside of time and space and age.... I suspect His triceps aren't jiggly.

Luke 11:38-40

³⁸ But the Pharisee was surprised when he noticed that Jesus did not first wash before the meal.
 ³⁹ Then the Lord said to him, “Now then, you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. ⁴⁰ You foolish people! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also?
⁴¹ But now as for what is inside you—be generous to the poor, and everything will be clean for you.

 

Dirty medicine

I love the fresh, scented warm breeze softly fluttering the curtains as it swirls into the house on these glorious spring days. With joy, I opened the window, and reached my winter white cheeks to the sun. I took a long deep breath, and then my lungs were instantly coated in yellow pollen, and my eyes suddenly looked as though a massive and sudden onset of conjunctivitis had ensnared me. My nose became a leaky faucet, trying in vain to wash away the allergens that were marching like soldiers through my respiratory system. Remember that rose and thorn symbol of yesterday's post? Spring is a rose with thorns for me.

I love spring. I love the radiant flowers, the blooming dogwood and cherry, the sweeping golden forsythia, the flocks of happy birds, the call of geese returning, the naked trees spectacularly and in a moment clothed in lime green, the warm days when tshirts are all one needs to wear.  But in the south, and in most areas, the enemy of the lovers of spring is the pollen. Here in Charlotte, a thick mustard yellow pollen covers everything in the spring.

I only have allergies for about 2 or 3 weeks right at this time of the year. But they become debilitating if I don't take allergy medicine. The sad thing is right when the weather is briefly the most perfect weather for opening windows and airing out the house, I can only do so at risk of being swallowed whole in a sneeze.

Did you know that many allergists believe that if we are not exposed to dirt while we are young we develop allergies? I don't get why I have allergies then, because I was a very dirty little girl. And I worked on a farm ingesting all kinds of worms, and filth there. Maybe I would have allergies all year instead of just those 3 weeks if I hadn't eaten all that dirt as a kid. Maybe I should have eaten more!  All those clean freak moms with those pristine, sterile homes, remember this information. It may prevent a life time of suffering for your children. Stop vacuuming, stop removing shoes when you enter your home, stop that compulsive scrubbing. You are setting your kids up for bankruptcy in kleenex purchases. Dirt may not taste good, and it may look ugly, but who knew that the filthy little urchins were prepping their immune system for future onslaught?

It is of course illustrative of another of God's clear teachings. It is the struggles, the trials, the dirt along the path that molds and shapes our character.  A little struggle now reaps the ability to overcome greater struggles then. That is why James who coincidentally wrote the book of James tells us to count it ALL joy when we encounter many trials. It strengthens us for the really really big trials that might otherwise consume us. If we haven't learned to overcome the little things, it is not likely we will be prepared to overcome the big things. Remember that students when you ask ,"Why do I need to do this math? I will never use it!" You might not use that particular quadratic equation, but I assure you, the brain cells being exercised by it will undoubtedly come in handy some day. Practice lying, you become a liar. Practice complaining, you become a complainer. Practice overcoming, you learn to overcome. You become an overcomer, instead of being the overcomee. You swallow the dirt instead of it swallowing you. Get my drift?

It is clear that I must take a moratorium on cleaning. Off to the verdant hills sprinkled with blossoms I will go to ingest my medicine of dirt.

John 16:32-33

³² “A time is coming and in fact has come when you will be scattered, each to your own home. You will leave me all alone. Yet I am not alone, for my Father is with me.
   ³³ “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.”

Long days of winter begin.....

As I started packing away the ornaments, Asherel walked by and wryly commented, "I am surprised you didn't start putting those away at 12:01 a.m. the day after Christmas."
"I thought about it," I said.
I love Christmas decorations, until the day after Christmas. Then I am ready to move on to Spring and maybe even summer vacation. The decorations were up for a solid month, and I had to rearrange our house to fit the Christmas tree in the right corner, so everything was a little cramped and cluttered for a month. I hate clutter. In a flurry of cleaning, while the boys still slept, I carted Christmas away. Now the dreary long months of winter stretch before me.

I would have been cross country skiing instead of cleaning if Mother Nature had cooperated, but she had not. She stopped snowing before there was barely a coating on the grass, and the roads were clear. I did put on my skis and do a few laps in the backyard, in case it was the last snow we saw in ten years.
I used my imagination to provide the excitement during the 1/16 mile loops.
"Is that a bear I see in the distance?" I asked my Pretend Ski Friend.
"I don't think so..." she answered, "In fact, I believe it is a snow covered lounge chair. But they are easily mistaken for bears."
I careened down the "hill" and did my giant shalom around the many dog poop piles.  While it was hard to contain the exhilaration from my little venture into the giant backyard wilderness, I tired of the game after three laps and headed back inside.
"You were only out there five minutes!" exclaimed Asherel.
"Yes, but I had seen all there was to see in four," I explained.

So we have two more days of my beloved boys afterwhich they return to real life. Then our season of craziness commences. We have two final months to build and perfect our helicopter and our trebuchet. There are deadlines for 3 art contests in the next 6 weeks, and we are about a thousand pages behind in biology. Honeybun has an agility trial mid January and we have to schedule some snow boarding trips so Asherel can use her new snowboard. My new art semester starts, and this year is the year I find an agent to represent me and sell my books to an adoring- public- in- waiting.

I look at my clean living room with the same joy I looked at my new Christmas living room a month ago. I know that soon I will not have enough time to clean or sit very long to reflect. It has been a wonderful Christmas vacation but the peace and leisure is about to be sucked away as we hit the new year running. I left one little piece of Christmas on display, however. I left the little creche Asherel made me on the piano where the morning sun rests before marching on with the day.  I left two little angels to guard it- one a gift from my son, the other a gift from our dear friend Polly. Those three things will keep me anchored during the storm of frenzy about to rage around us. The three things that I need to save time and energy and love for- God, family, and friends.

Job 27:10
¹⁰ Will they find delight in the Almighty?
   Will they call on God at all times?