Skip to main content

For the love of laundry...

The thirtieth of March was Mothering Sunday here in the UK.  To celebrate, our church had put together a little presentation of things the children had said about their mums.  It was pretty cute; you know the kind of thing.  "How would you describe your mum in one word?" got answers like, "Fantastic", "Beautiful", and "Bossy boots".  The next question was, "What is your mum good at?"  I was just giggling at some of the responses, when up on screen flashed:
Hanging the washing out. (Toby, 3)
Now, our church is a large one, but I'm pretty sure we have the only three-year-old Toby in it.  Therefore my son thinks that my lifetime pinnacle of achievement, the one thing I could win awards in, is putting clothes on racks to dry.  Isn't it great to know what you're capable of?

It really is as exciting as it looks.
I have to admit, I have had rather a lot of practice.  In fact, ferrying clothes from washing basket to machine to drying racks to drawers sometimes seems to take up most of my waking hours.  And it's not what you might call an absorbing pastime.  Especially when you turn around and whooomph! that washing basket which was empty five minutes ago has mysteriously filled up to overflowing.  I didn't know we even had that many clothes!

And cloth nappies.  But you never have enough of those.
One of those things that people tell you about is doing everything to the glory of God.  Somehow this gets a special emphasis when your "everything" consists of wiping little noses, picking up endless toy cars and being woken up in the night, while trying to tell yourself that this will produce functioning  adult humans in, um, twenty years or so.  And in amongst the sleep deprivation you wonder how that heap of dirty washing you keep stepping over is supposed to glorify anybody, particularly God.

I don't have the whole answer, but I think one important part is remembering to be thankful.  I can groan as I yank another load of sheets out of the machine, I can yell at Toby as he runs through a puddle in his third pair of trousers that day, I can pull my hair out as Theo calmly dirties a nappy not five minutes after being changed... or I can say thank you.

  • Thank you for the invention of the automatic washing machine - and that we can afford to have one.  (Just imagine having to do all this by hand!)
    O lovely washing machine!  You certainly earn your keep.
  • Thank you for clothes to wear, and the generosity represented by all the friends who gave us babywear as gifts.
  • Thank you for space to hang all this washing, and for the spring weather that makes pegging it out in the sunshine a pleasure.
    Except that all that pegging makes it take twice as long - oops, I'm meant to be being thankful!
  • Thank you for happy, healthy children that enjoy life - even when it's hard on their clothes.
  •  And if nothing else:  Thank you that one day, those children will be able to do their own laundry!
Happy washing!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Three Mile an Hour God: Spiritual Formation Book 10

"The affirmed life must not become either a lazy life or a happy-ever-after, easy life. The affirmed life is not a life of the power of positive thinking. To be affirmed by God means to live with danger and promise."   Kosuke Koyama's book Three Mile an Hour God was written out of the experience of the Second World War and its aftermath in Japan. As Koyama says in his preface, it is "a collection of biblical reflections by one who is seeking the source of healing from the wounds... inflicted by the destructive power of idolatry." The title speaks of a God who moves at walking pace - three miles an hour - and even, in Jesus, comes to a "full stop" - nailed to a cross. If we try to move faster than the love of God, says Koyama, we fall into idolatry. What is the book about? Three Mile an Hour God has 45 chapters, each a separate short reflection headed by a Bible verse. Some deal specifically with Japan, considering her role in WWII, the damage inflicte

National Forest Way: Ellistown, Bagworth, Nailstone

You may well say, "Where?" I'd never heard of any of these three villages before I planned to walk through them. Back in the 1970s, it would have been possible to travel between them underground. All three had collieries producing exceptional amounts of coal (Bagworth set a Guinness World Record). Nailstone and Bagworth collieries were connected in 1967, and Ellistown was merged with the other two in 1971. All the mines are long closed now. The railway lines have been taken up, the winding wheels turned into civic sculptures, and the pit sites transformed into country parks. It was a beautiful sunny day, but we'd had a lot of rain recently. Within five minutes of leaving Ellistown, I was glad I'd worn my wellies.   The way took me alongside a quarry site and then into a collection of woods: Common Hill Wood, Workmans Wood, Battram Wood. The colours of the trees in the November sunshine were beautiful. The path was a muddy mess. At Battram village I crossed a newly

National Forest Way: Normanton le Heath to Ellistown

This 9-mile walk took me through the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Woods and Sence Valley Forest Park, and into the heavily-quarried countryside south of Coalville (no prizes for guessing what was mined there!) I originally planned to walk from Normanton le Heath to Donington le Heath, which had a pleasing symmetry. But I decided to go a bit further, to the hamlet of Ellistown.   It was a cold morning. I'd been in shorts the previous weekend, but today there was a frost. I added a flask of coffee, a scarf and gloves to my kit, and set off. For a small village, Normanton le Heath has a surprisingly wide road. I parked there rather than using the car park for the Jubilee Woods. That meant I was at my starting point straight away. I followed a road past some rather nice houses, crossed a field, and entered the Queen Elizabeth Jubilee Woods. The NFW leaflet told me that I was on the route of the Via Devana, a Roman road from Colchester to Chester. There isn't much left of it. a mosaic,