When Easter and Underwear and Dirty Dishes Collide

I live in laundry.  

And toy-clutter.  And piles. 

I live in noise.

And chaos. And crying.

And somedays, just the thought of those dirty dishes piled high on my kitchen counter; the thought of those growling tummies that will need feeding and the thought of all that underwear that still needs folding makes me want to pull the covers to my chin and beg the sun to slow its morning rise.

Somedays, just the thought of that big desk calendar highlighted in seven different colors to organize my daily spin; the thought of all those field trip forms that needed my attention yesterday and the heap of birthday cards that should have been mailed last month; the thought of cooking and grocery shopping and plodding through the aisles of Wal Mart for toilet paper once more is enough to make me wish away a day before it’s even begun. 

I know why C.S. Lewis wrote about the horror of the same old thing in his quirky classic, The Screwtape Letters.

I understand why the wise-old-devil in that tale admonished his junior trainee to trade out those wickedly grandiose plans for a simpler strategy for tripping up human beings— 

“Just work on their horror of the Same Old Thing.  The horror of the same old thing is one of the most valuable passions we have produced in the human heart.”

That aged demon wasn’t trying to burst the young imp’s dreams; he’d just been around long enough to know the dispiriting power of the circadian mundane.  

Any mom who has ever changed poopy diapers around the clock or mopped a dozen juice spills in one morning understands the horror of the same old thing.

Any mom who has ever stepped on yesterday’s toys as she stumbles out of bed or faced last night’s supper dishes at breakfast time understands the horror of the same old thing. 

Any mom who has ever held puke buckets at 2 A.M. and has fought hard for joy right in the middle of it all–in the middle of the hurling and heaving, the diapers and the mess–knows that the same old thing can empty a soul quicker than dirty dishwater slips down the drain.   

The Devil doesn’t need a fancy plan to wear us down; he simply needs to grow us tired of our daily walk. 

Satan doesn’t need to lure us into evil; he simply needs to get our eyes fixed on the drudgery so we miss the delight of the One who walks beside us.  

Maybe that’s why today, before the sun rose and my rainbow-colored calendar spun me out the door, I fell in love with my Savior all over again.

Today, I wanted to fall in arms of the One who stripped down to his undies and washed a dozen pair of dirty feet just hours before His own holy toes stumbled up Calvary’s hill in their place. 

Because as I lingered in the thirteenth chapter of John, I realized this: While Satan aims to weary my heart, Jesus seeks to woo it.

Jesus got up from the supper and took off His coat. He picked up a cloth and put it around Him. Then He put water into a wash pan and began to wash the feet of His followers. He dried their feet with the cloth He had put around Himself. -John 13:4-5

No one but Jesus can turn work into worship.

No one but Jesus can transform the horror of the same old thing into an act of love.

I heard a bed creak, and I knew that my little boy would soon patter down the hall, but for just a moment I savored the Word and tried to imagine the scene….

Immanuel clearing toe jamb. 

The Author and Perfecter of our faith stooping into love. 

Jesus never ran from drudgery; He transformed it into devotion. 

In the quiet before my daily craze, I pictured my Savior cleaning dirty toes.

 And I thought of the day that I’d discovered my own little ones giggling behind a bathroom door; brother and sister washing one another’s feet.

I haven’t forgotten the way my brown-haired boy caressed his sister’s toes, his slender fingers splashing water across her feet.

Or how she’d warned her brother of the stink he might encounter.

“You better plug your nose, Josh!” she’d declared from her throne atop the toilet lid.  
“My feet smell like sweaty socks.”

I haven’t forgotten how brother had shrugged his shoulders and laughed and let the water drizzle happy down her legs. 

In that precious moment, Jesus had been a six-year-old hanging out in my bathroom on bended knee.

Josh had dried his sister’s feet with a red-striped bath towel and painted her toenails in hues of hope.

Then he’d bowed low in a dramatic finale.

“Thanks for letting me serve you, Madame,” he’d said in his silly man voice.

And Maggie had hopped off the toilet and curtsied; then patted the lid and invited her brother to have a seat. 

“Now it’s my turn to wash. Give me your feet!”

The first ray of pink was stretching its fingers across the horizon, the buzzer on the washing machine singing its soprano song that reminds me to switch the loads.

A shower turned on down the hall, and I knew my husband would soon come looking for his first cup of morning coffee, so I headed to the kitchen to face the day.

I filled the sink with water, dunked a plate caked with day-old pasta into the foamy wetness, and let the words I’d read at dawn wash over my slow-to-wake soul:

 I grabbed my sponge and tackled the same old thing once again. 

But this time, I echoed my little girl’s line, “Now it’s my turn, Jesus…”

From my view at the kitchen sink, the rising sun looked like an orange butterfly captured in the limbs of a bare tree in my backyard.

And as the pile of dirty dishes disappeared beneath the white suds, I thanked Jesus for capturing me with His love and setting me free from the horror of the same old thing.

Free to fly on mercy’s wings each morning.