When I was younger I remember hating having to clean house every weekend. My little sister and I would wake up early and do our best to sneak to my mom's bedroom door and close it quietly. We knew if she woke up, even just for a moment, she would yell her usual question/order, "DID YOU GIRLS GET YOUR HOUSEWORK DONE????!!!!!" Then we would have to get to work cleaning the kitchen and living room, our rooms and our bathroom. But if we could get away without waking her up we would have a morning of watching cartoons and eating cereal in front of the tv on the floor, before having to do our house work. If we sat in front of the tv we could keep the volume down and hopefully mom wouldn't wake up. If we woke her up, we would be put to work.
When I say cleaning, I learned about 3 kinds of cleaning when I was growing up. The first was the "pick up" kind of clean. That's the kind my mom taught us to do everyday. Just mostly picking up after ourselves so the clutter would be manageable and dishes at night. But on Saturdays we did the second kind of cleaning. I called it "cleaning GOOD." That's the when we had to polish the wood furniture, put everything in it's place and sweep, or vacuum. We would do the bathroom just as good, it was scrubbed clean and readied for another week. Then we would head to our rooms. My sister would usually just get busy and get her room done. However, I hated to clean. I used to sit for hours in my room because I didn't want to clean my room good. But my mom would NOT give in. She would let me sit in there for as long as it took. Sometimes those days turned into evening and I would end up having dinner, doing dishes and then going straight to bed with my room still a wreck. Me thinking I won.
Other times I would take the path of least resistance and shove clothes in drawers, or my closet or even under my bed...when I say I didn't like to clean, I really mean HATED to clean. Those times more often than not my mom would go to put something away in my room while I was at school, or out playing and that would be the beginning of her "helping" me clean. She would pull every piece of clothing from my closet and dump every drawer in my dresser in the middle of my room. She would flip my bed up on the wall and leave it up there. During this rampage she would be screaming and cussing, and a rage would continue to build in her with every bit of mess she would find. Sometimes I would come home in the middle of the rages, those days could tear my self worth down because of the words she used. But the days that she went in my room when I was gone, well those were probably what taught me how to "teach" people with destruction. Those days I would come in without having any clue that my mom had even gone into my room. I would walk in and she would be her normal self, never giving away a hint of the HUGE mess I would be walking into. She knew what I was walking into, she knew I was going to get mad. She would then come into my doorway and stand and yell orders at me.
The third kind of cleaning, well that one I can only describe as the "pretend" cleaning. That was done when people from out of town were coming to stay with us, my parents were having a party or some other major event that my mom wanted to see her house as a "perfect home." This kind of cleaning I think made me hate cleaning more than either of the first 2. This kind of cleaning meant every single inch, every crack, inside and outside. We all worked on this cleaning. If you stopped for a moment, mom assigned you more work!! I think that I hated it most because I knew that every other day we lived in a normal house, not a museum. When I got older I would say "Why do we have to pretend to have this perfect house when people come over?!?!? It's being fake!!!!" That of course was a gateway to a HUGE blowout between us. She would scream berating threats angrily and what I couldn't say out loud I would say in my thoughts. Well I told myself every time, "I will never do this pretend cleaning when I have my own place!!!" Of course for many years I did exactly this.
For a long time my homes were a wreck. If people showed up unexpectedly I would pretend not to be home. If I knew someone was coming I would sound like a drill sergeant and pretty much redo everything anyone did. I would go from my cabinets being empty of clean dishes and having to wash one to cook or eat, to every dish being clean and put away. There was never an in between. I hid in my room and I didn't care what anything outside that looked like. Honestly when I lived in my room I kept everything I might need within an arms reach. This kept my life within my control, but my house was chaos. But if someone was coming, I'd be out barking orders and being everything I hated growing up with my family. I didn't realize that the way I lived my life was directly reflected in my housekeeping. Then I met God.
Funny thing is that when I met God He didn't say "you have to clean your house." In the beginning I still lived with a dirty house in the chaos. I honestly didn't relate my relationship with God, with cleaning my home. I couldn't even relate getting into God's word, with a relationship with God. I could keep my relationship with God in one part of my life and every other part of me in another. I lived for God when I thought about it, remembered or needed to look like it. But really living for God takes much more than just accepting Jesus as my Savior. Salvation is not instant in who we are, only how God sees us. God asks us to give Him ALL of us. He knows when we say yes what our expectations are. As our Creator, He is already prepared and not at all surprised when we expect instant perfection. He also isn't surprised when we get in a rush, get frustrated or even when we fall away. He doesn't put us in our rooms until we do what He wants us to. No He does the exact opposite. He lets us make our own choices, because He sees His whole plan. He will wait patiently for us. He has personal knowledge of what it will take for us to really learn what He's teaching us. He knows change is hard for me. He also knows when I am faced with change I will fight against it, as long as I can. But He waits for me.
So as I am reading my book for my women's Bible study, "Open Your Bible" (by Raechel Myers and Amanda Bible Williams) they share this bit of truth,
"There's a kind of unsettled comfort in keeping the messy parts of our lives out of the light. There is comfort, but NOT peace."
Instantly I think about the state of my house, and I puff up a little because I have come a long way from the chaos and dirty mess. As I was reading I had been thinking to myself, "the closer I get to God, the more I learn about Who He is, the cleaner my house is becoming. The cleaner I NEED my house to be, continuously. I want it more organized and less chaotic, both inside and outside." The more He changes me the more I recognize the changes He's making. With this new knowledge I decided to search through His word on the subject of a clean house. So I searched Google for Scriptures about house cleaning...this is the truth He gave me.
This was the first time I have read these in the Message translation. It brought new understanding to these Verses! As He's been cleaning me of the sins I was drowning in, it's ignited a fire for me to clean my house and keep it clean. Not only spiritually, but physically. Where there is less clutter, dirt and chaos, there will be less distraction. There are less places for the enemy to sneak in. The closer I am growing to God, the more mature my faith is getting. Then I went to my usual translation, the NLT to see the difference...
I love that God says that as I let go of the dirty, messy parts of me and begin to seek Him, I will crave more of Him. I will then understand real salvation. When I make my relationship with Him and learning about His will for me my priority, He will bring about change in every part of me and my life. Some of the changes will be very recognizable, and some changes will be subtle, like a clean house. As I look back on the different times in my life that I have had the messiest house, those were moments I was the most lost. On the opposite side are the moments I was closest with God and my house was clean. When I let God in to clean out the darkest, messiest parts of me that I have been burying and hiding forever, that's when the REAL cleaning gets done. That's when I learn how much more I appreciate a clean house and heart, than the mess and dirt of the old me. That there are going to be dark corners He has to bring to the light, for them to be cleaned up. Those moments may be painful, but God is answering my prayers for a clean heart.
Not that every moment of every day my house is dust free or spotless, but it is clean and I gladly answer the door. Believe me we still have all 3 kinds of cleaning going on in my home. In fact if you talk to my family today, they will tell you they hate when people come to stay for a visit, only because of my expectations of cleaning that has to be done. I actually end up only having 1 helper, and he reluctantly helps. When I am cleaning I find myself complaining about having to do it all and arguing with God about how much I have to do while others sit. He reminds me that my expectations are the reason I have to do it alone. God has taught me that if I leave the messes in the dark corners, they will grow into an unmanageable mess, one that will be much harder to clean. In those moments I usually start talking about having a housekeeper...then I remember that I have a housekeeper, the only housekeeper I'll ever really need...Who's your housekeeper?
