Never Just a Chore
Most people don’t love doing the dishes or folding the laundry.
Typically, I don’t either. Unless I'm on a cleaning rampage to cleanse my brain. In that case, the clean house is just an added benefit.
But I bring up this delightful topic of pesky house chores because my husband has a habit of leaving his dirty work clothes on the bathroom floor.
We do have a laundry basket, it’s just in the closet. I obviously need to just move it since he loves to leave his clothes right there in the bathroom, but we don’t exactly have the biggest bathroom on earth in our current living situation.
So imagine my thought process most nights when I get out of the shower, freshly clean and ready to get into bed, just to see a pile of dirty clothes on my bathroom floor. Especially after I’ve already started a load of everything that was in the laundry basket where it belongs.
I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not always a positive reaction.
But for some reason, last night it was overtly positive in a way that momentarily concerned me. It felt like it wasn’t my thought if that makes sense - it was more like a convicting, Holy Spirit-type thought.
Because I looked at the laundry pile, sighed, and thought:
“Thank God he’s home and I’m able to do all this laundry. Even if it’s in the wrong spot.”
This sounds cheesy, I know. Just bear with me for a second.
Over the past year, I have been working really hard at rerouting my negative thoughts into more positive ones. Most of my thought redirection is about the way that I view myself, or the way that I fear other people view me, but I’ve been trying to let that same idea seep into every less-than-ideal aspect of my life.
Being a wife and a mother is the greatest joy in my life aside from my faith, but sometimes I really wonder if I was ever cut out for it. As partners and parents, we all have our ways of falling short, and I have my fair share that I beat myself up for daily.
I hate to admit it, but I can be a bit naggy with my husband. I expect him to be perfect (even though I’m far from it), and I get impatient when I have to ask him something twice.
I’ve gotten much better about this since we first got married, but there’s still room for growth and I’m actively working on it.
But this new thought was exactly that - growth. A few years ago, I would have gotten immediately irritated because I’d probably told him not to do that earlier in the week.
Am I fully excusing him for being a bit lazy in this regard? No.
However, I know women whose husbands aren’t home to leave clothes everywhere, most of them overseas. They probably long for the days that their husbands were actually home, messes and all. Naturally, this makes me stop and take into further account that my husband could essentially be called away tomorrow for the same thing.
This isn’t meant to be a “Poor me, I’m a military wife” post, but more of a “Dang. Thank God he’s here and not there right now.” Especially with everything that’s going on in the world.
And for those who aren’t military families, this same truth still applies. How grateful should we all be that we have families that drive us crazy, children that make messes, and spouses that work hard to provide for said family? Immensely.
Truly, how blessed am I that I have a house and family to steward?
If you consciously work to redirect the negative aspects that come along with such stewardship, and look at them in a different light, it’s easy to see how each one is a gift.
If this isn’t an easy thing for you, know that it isn’t for me either. Because of our human nature, none of this comes naturally at first. But there's hope in knowing that once you truly start looking up in times of trouble, feeling down is a far less appealing option.
As for me, I’m going to continue doing my best to redirect any sort of animosity, upset, or disappointment in an overly positive light. If you struggle with the same things, I encourage you to try it out. It could very easily reroute your life for the better.
The Bible shows us that there’s so much power in our thoughts; if you constantly sow seeds of sadness and self-pity, you’ll eventually reap a similar harvest.
It’s so normalized in this world to basically hate all of your responsibilities: women despise their husbands, and resent the “boring” lives they lead during the early years of parenting their children. We tend to focus more on what we’re giving up or dealing with than what we have and what we’re gaining in those hard seasons.
It’s easy to fall victim to normalizations like that, so I try to instead fall back on scripture to remind me of the real truth. Romans is essentially my comfort book in the Bible, and it has no shortage of sharp reminders as to how to live our lives properly as children of God.
In this specific situation, I’m reminded specifically of Romans 12:2. I’m an avid Bible journaler, so I looked back at my notes for this verse when I started writing about this topic and realized how well this passage would tie into it. I wrote:
“Strive to be WORDLY, not worldly. Let your heart and mind be transformed by God.”
There’s so much power in the kind of thoughts and actions that you choose to cultivate in your daily life - however this may look for you. When you actively choose to renew and reroute your mind to focus on the bigger picture, the colors get so much brighter.
(The note in Romans that I mentioned, at the very top.)
Until next week,
— E. Byers, author of The Grassy Laine
