THOUGHTS

April 22, 2020

Just for fun repost from 2014

Notice this is not real: she is in a maid's uniform.  What?  You don't have one of those to fold your laundry?  Neither do I.  

My daughter went through her husband's closet and brought over a pile of his hand-me-downs for my boys to go through.  Yep, they are man-sized now. 

The thing of it is that when I have discards, I wad them up and stuff them in a bag or something.  The t-shirt pile she brought over looked like she had ironed them.  It was one of those don't ask, don't tell moments.  My laundry has never been that neat. 

I do remember ironing once in the early eighties.

 I go for years at a time not even knowing if I own an iron: let's see, if I had an iron, where would I keep it?  I really have tried.  I have given myself laundry folding sessions, alone in secret where no one can see my ineptness.  I have a failure to fold disorder.  I just have never folded a neat piece of clothing in my life.  I'm not good at origami either.

I have known people who actually have ironed their sheets and even their husband's underwear.  I got their autographs because I knew I was in the presence of greatness far beyond what I could ever dream of achieving or even wanting to achieve.  

 I have a coffee mug that says,

"Martha Stewart doesn't live here."

My daughter and I are a lot alike in many ways, but she did not get her neatness cleaning gene from me.  Perhaps there is a Martha Stewart gene in there somewhere.  Or maybe it's a throw-back gene from generations long ago, because I know for a fact that even though my nearly perfect grandmother kept a tidy house, she hated to clean.  She had a love-hate relationship with her vacuum.  I have an inability to commit to mine as well.

What's the spiritual lesson in all this?  I don't know.  I haven't moved beyond that vision of the neatly stacked pile of t-shirts yet, shuddering to think how I disassembled them, unfolding them, messing them up to throw them at the boys yelling, "Who wants this?"  I felt like a crook dividing up the loot.  When I got done, it looked like a crime scene with clothes strewn all over a couch and two chairs, the floor and two boys in messy mounds.  

All I know is that when we get to heaven, we are going to get white robes.  I'm not sure if there  are irons there because it will be heaven, not the other hot place.  And I'm sure they won't even allow me near the passing out tables knowing what I would do to the nice, new neatly folded robes: "Here's an X-large!  Who needs a medium?"  

"...behold a great multitude, which no one could count, 

from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, 

standing before the throne and before the Lamb,

clothed in white robes..."

Rev. 7:9

Since the Bride of Christ will be without spot or wrinkle, 

somebody besides me will be doing the ironing, that's for sure.