Why I’m Leaving the Windex in The Cupboard

I used to keep a bottle of Windex on my kitchen counter.

It was my go-to weapon to battle those pint-sized fingerprints that tried to siege every pane of glass in our tiny rental house.

My dear friend Steph remembers those ten P.M. phone calls when I’d convince her to talk to me as I mopped the floors in the moonlight.

And my mother still tells the tale of watching her twenty-something daughter dust the furniture in a chic black dress with a newborn baby on the hip before church one Sunday morning long ago. (Because that’s what great homemakers do when friends are coming over for lunch when the preaching’s done).

But I think I’m losing my edge.

My feather duster disappeared a decade ago, and last year I learned that if your socks are thick enough, you won’t even notice those sticky spots on the kitchen floor.

But maybe what really proves my point is the fact that, at the moment, my Windex bottle is tucked beneath the sink behind a pile of paper bags and jug of dishwasher detergent. 

I know that doesn’t sound all that unusual.

But you’ve got to understand this—yesterday morning, I woke to a house filled with colored glass.

Not stained glass, just colored glass.

Window marker creations covered every inch of the five-foot-windows that stretch from one wall of my living room to the other.

 Foggy fingerprints bid me good morning from a swirling chaos of color.

Streams of gold shimmered through the rainbow smears as the sun rose, and I stood, coffe-cup in hand, studying our in-house graffiti in the raw morning light….

The concentric circles that had served as a target for the a Nerf gun contest the day before.

I was heading to the kitchen to dig for the Windex when I remembered those words that I’d just underlined in my new favorite book. 

The graffiti can be grace.

My man emerged from the bedroom in pale blue scrubs.

As he leaned down to kiss me good-bye before he raced off to the O.B. ward, his eyes caught the graffiti, too.


“Wow!” he said, swallowing hard. “Our whole home is their canvas, isn’t it?

He pointed his head toward the bedrooms where our five kids slept and then raised an eyebrow at our gaudy window panes.

I laughed at my husband’s fitting metaphor and returned his grin with a wink.

“It’s what I always wanted, isn’t it?“

A home teeming with life. A palette of possibilities. A canvas splashed with breath and beauty.

He nodded slowly, graced me with a kiss, and hurried out the door to welcome a wrinkled bundle of new life into the world.

I listened to the ticking of the kitchen clock and the rhythmic whirr of the washing machine

I pictured those never-ending mounds of dirty underwear piled in the laundry room below, the clean-but-not-put-away socks still waiting to be stashed in dresser drawers.

And I remembered the rest of those underlined words, the wise musings of another joy-seeking mama:

 What seems like a defacement may be a glimpse of His face. 
All the writing on the wall could be love notes.

Suddenly I was overwhelmed by my grace graffiti....the smudges and the smears, the dirty and unfinished, and the ten hands and feet that daily create this messy beautiful.

 I vowed to leave the Windex in the cupboard a little longer.

After all, that colored glass just may be the perfect way to welcome a new day into the world, fingerprints and all. 

Linking up with Jill at Hearts at Home today for Third Thursday Thoughts.

And with Emily for Imperfect Prose, on encouragement. May you find beauty in the mess, dear friends!