Five Minute Friday - Laundry

It’s these moments towards the end of the week that I find myself looking forward to; giddy with anticipation like a kid a Christmas. That one night of the week when my phone goes wild and blows up with Twitter notifications followed by the sudden hush when the prompt is revealed and all the writers duck out to do what we do best. It’s a fellowship of friends that gather here to write into the wee hours of the morning; then reading each others words and sharing encouragement as we go. Yes, this community opens wide and invites you in to share. Come and visit and read. You will be blessed.

This Week: Laundry

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There is a growing list of things I have a hard time doing. Or cannot do in some cases. Simple, ordinary things that should be mere moments out of my day. They are not. Putting on shoes. Loading a dishwasher. Standing in the shower long enough to wash my hair and get clean. Everyday household chores and personal care-taking routine that are taking on new meanings as I learn to reschedule and re-time this living of my life.

This is part of getting older. This is part of having a chronic illness. This is part of life.

This discovery of things I cannot do well emerged in my desert journey. The beginning tell-tale sign: one joint in my thumb that would not stop its ever thrumming ache. The ache that spread from one join to another, until it was a systemic waterfall of inflammation and pain and things coming undone.

When things come undone, there are things you have to let go of. I am not good at letting anything go. I’ve written here and there about my habits of keeping things forever and a day. My Instagram feed is a testimony to decades of post-its and pens – held for some mysterious purpose that I must be withholding – even from myself. My Facebook laments cleaning out bags and bags of Bath & Bodyworks products well past their expiration. And those are just things – never mind hurts, heartaches, and wounds of which I cannot speak. No. I do not let things go easily.

But when walking and standing are issues and doing them for longer than five minutes is a challenge, some things have to go. My house is not as clean and tidy as I would like; as it used to be. Dishes sometimes pile up longer. Laundry manages to get clean, but does not move much past being clean in the basket – folding has gone by the wayside.

I could allow myself to become buried in shame and piles of clean, fresh laundry. Or I could give thanks for the things that remain.

photo by cohdra

• The lessons that linger from those desert times – the reminders of God present in my life and the lives of others – working miracle upon miracle – even in the smallest detail.

• The husband who lives marriage vows and love out like a verb – driving relentlessly, though it is, in itself exhausting; carrying the chores of feeding and cleaning upon those broad shoulders, and still finding time to rub mine when the pain escalates and overtakes me.

• The daughter who is learning compassion as she watches her Mama struggle with the everyday – learning to pitch in more and be helpful – gaining maturity as she takes things into her own hands and grows her responsibility.

• Friends who reach in and across from real life and through screens and in letters to hug, encourage, sustain, and pray – taking time from their own lives to pitch in, lend a hand, never forgetting that I do things a little slower, a little softer these days.

These everyday graces are my focus. As I turn with my laundry basket full of clean clothes and warm napkins and rest it on the end of the bed once again, I realize that this new way is not a bad way – just different – and this slower, softer way I’m making in the world allows time I didn’t take before for giving thanks and seeing miracles. And I’m okay with that. 

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