The White Load

I was up late, laundry scattered over chairs and sofa, piles of chaos waiting for my ordering hand. Being folded in expectation of company's arrival. I whipped through the bath towel load in no time at all, feeling a small degree of triumph at the neat stacks, now shelf-ready. The red load was similar, made up mostly of girls dresses, a couple of my knit shirts and boys' shirts, all laid out smooth and ready to be hung. The dark load contained many pairs of little boy jeans, too short after a season of wear, with holes ripped in every knee. And then came the white loads...

No-match socks mutliplied, wadded undershirts, underwear caught and balled in the corners of fitted sheets, washcloths strangled in the grasp of Sunday's white tights... ahhh, the white loads that cannot be avoided, these bleached waters must be navigated.

Easy triumphs rarely comprise the necessities of life. Life will go on even if Surprise Girl doesn't have her favorite red dress. Hunter Boy can always wear another pair of hole-pocked jeans. But life stops just short of toppling into the abyss, toes curled over the precipice, fighting for a shred of saving balance, without clean underwear. Yes, these are the trenches of a mother.

Some days are blizzards of white loads. The mundane, the tedious, the daily, the necessary.

Do I see God in the white loads? Ann said it this way, "The only way to see God manifested in the world around is with the eyes of Jesus within. God within is the one seeing God without." IT'S ALL GOD. That's a new layer on the onion. Not only is God in the white load, the ability to find God in the white load is God at work. It's like looking in two mirrors at once and seeing your reflection in the the reflection in the reflection, ad infinitum. No matter how far you look, you will always see God at work at the heart of it.

Yesterday the mundane took shape as greasy globs of Vaseline in Hurricane Baby's hair. Washing after washing, shampoo, grease-cutting dish soap, scrubbing and rubbing, red-rimmed swollen eyes and wailing... and no avail. He still looks like a q-tip full of earwax.

God, what do you have for me here? What eternal truth? Where are You in this white load? What a great picture of us being washed in the Word. You know its working, you see the suds and feel the scrub, yet, rinse the soap, step out into "the real world" and there sin is, sticky, icky, still present. Welcome to sanctification: to sanctify, to be set apart, be sacred. And to KNOW THAT IT IS PROGRESSIVE, SOME DAY IT WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED. Hurricane Baby's hair will eventually come clean. So will my nature. On THAT day. In the meantime, sing along with Dory, "Just keep washing, just keep washing." Yes, God is certainly present in this white load.

When God purifies the heart by faith, the market is sacred as well as the sanctuary; neither remaineth there any work or place which is profane. -Martin Luther (emphasis mine)

My heart is purified, being sanctified and the white loads are sacred.

Psalm 27:8, "When thou saidst, Seek my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, Lord, will I seek." I can find it. Even, or especially, in the white loads.