Clean YOUR house? I'd Be Happy To!

(photo courtesy of picturesof.net)
I've apparently lost out on another million dollar, money making patent.

Scrubby slippers clean your floors...now your house work is not a bore!

Oh my gosh! Really? I saw them in the store and went, "Well, there ya go. It's happened again. I even grabbed another customer at HEB to show him."

He was less than impressed, but sort of amused, I could tell.

Just for the record, I invented scrubby slippers in the 70's. As a young teenager, I really wasn't a fan of mopping floors, but I was a huge fan of loud music and dancing.

So, I came up with the idea to Pinesol soak two wash rags in the sink, then place them semi-securely under my bare feet, put CCR on the turntable, turning  it up as loud as I could without blowing the fuzzy orange paneled speaker and went to town dancing and prancing my way to a clean floor.

It was perfect! Even my toes fit neatly under the cabinets where the runaway Cheerios inevitably landed every morning, because my brothers couldn't pour a bowl of cereal straight into the bowl to save their life.

My mother would come home and compliment my sparkly kitchen floors, "The floors look fantastic! Great job!"

I never owned up to doing it the barefoot/washrag way, because, well, my mom is a white glove inspector kind of mom and she'd already given me Mopping 101 class instructions.

Creedance Clearwater pumping "Proud Mary" was no where in that lesson.

Most teens do not like cleaning their house. Period.

Sometimes though, my mom gave me Golden Advice. One very important lesson came at 11 years old, just as I was heading out the door for my first official babysitting job.

She yelled from the kitchen, "If there are dishes in the sink...wash them!"

I took that to heart and also took it a step further.

After the kids were in bed, or while they were enjoying a bedtime snack I'd prepared, I would wash dishes, vacuum, quickly dust and pile all of their clutter into neat little piles...sometimes even labeling them.

While cleaning up yet another doggie tee tee accident in the kitchen the other day, and grumbling under my breath about a certain daughter who suddenly appeared at my doorstep, it suddenly occurred to me out of nowhere that lesson.

And how much easier it is to clean someone else's house.

In my head, mop in hand, I thought, "It's so much easier to clean other people's houses." Yes, that was repetitive, but I'm hoping you'll grab hold of the spiritual handle I just held out for you.

Because at that moment, God was all, "Exactly."

And then the egg timer/alarm bell went off in my head.

Isn't that the truth???

Physically and Spiritually, it is always easy to see the spots on someone else's mirror, clutter in their closets, or the dust on their dressers.

I can easily look to my daughter or whoever and see where they need to improve.

Well, if they'd just do this and not that. If they'd spend their time doing this instead of that. We can go on and on about those we know and love.

We know exactly how to clean up their messes.

We just have a hard time clearly seeing our own reflection, in our own spotty mirrors.

God is always reminding me to be merciful and loving by the measure of mercy and love that he has shown to me. And it's a trainload.

That's when I am reminded to put down my stinky scrub brush and I say, "Oh yeah."
Sorry.

I love, love, love how He speaks into my life daily with these little life lessons.

This week I read part of, The Last Lecture, by Randy Pausch who had many great words of wisdom to offer including these;

• The best gift an educator can give is to get someone to become self reflective.
• The best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they're learning something else.

I always thought mom was teaching me how to mop floors.

All along, God was teaching me how to clean my own house.