True Cleaning Confessions

It's "true confession" time...my name is Grammy and I used to be a slob. If you've seen pictures on the Four Sisters Farm blog, most likely you have seen me at or near my best (unless we were blogging about a project we were working on). My Mom can testify (and indeed she has) that I used to loathe cleaning of any kind.  I could pretty much walk over, around, or through the same mess multiple times with no desire to do anything about it.

Even as a young wife and mother, I was terribly inconsistent about cleaning...I knew HOW to clean...Mom made sure of that...I just didn't do it often enough!  Our first apartment when Pop and I moved away from our folks to go to college was a dark, depressing dungeon of a place that was built around an octopus of a heating system. It was such a small dwelling that we warmed the bathroom with a blow dryer! The kitchen wasn't really big enough to be called a kitchenette...the sink was a small bar sink...try doing dishes in that!

But somewhere along the line I gradually got better...probably because I had to teach the Four Sisters how to keep house.  I now LOVE living in a clean house and even enjoy the process of cleaning.  I keep a pretty clean house now...which leads to the whole reason for this post...

I recently decided it was time to mop the floor...the whole hard surface floor...and I still believe I can clean it best the old fashioned way...on my hands and knees with a bucket and a rag...that way I can see and feel what needs cleaning.

So I was dunking, wringing, scrubbing, and thinking (it seems to me that thinking is one if the luxuries associated with mundane tasks like mopping). I was thinking as I mopped that I could use an actual mop...but down on the floor on my hands and knees I could see so much more clearly what needed cleaned up...I even cleaned things off the table legs and chairs that I hadn't noticed...things that had definitely been there a while!

Then the parallels began coming to mind...in my walk with God, when I am in a position of humility, I am more aware of the things that need cleaning up in my life...thoughts and actions that need to be dealt with, people I need to forgive, grace and mercy I need to extend, wrong thinking that needs to be exposed to the truth of God's Word. 

In a position of humility, I can make choices about whether or not to allow God to work in me...letting Him convict me by His Holy Spirit...hearing Him tell me He loves me enough to come alongside me to provide what I need to affect change...and sometimes even witnessing Him making the changes for and in me, simply because I was willing.

When it comes to deep cleaning, God is the Master Cleaner.

Psalm 51:1-3 says, "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.  Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.  For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me."