(Part One can be found here)
Monday morning came, following a dreadful weekend full of anxiety on my part, as well as feelings of guilt and failure. I felt guilty that Mike stayed home in order to clean up so that it wasn't as bad as it really was when they arrived. I felt guilty for letting the house get to this point. I felt like such a failure that I was this person who could not take care of her home, or be a good example to the kids as a homemaker.
I headed up the sidewalk with Christian to get him to school; we were late. At the end of our block is a street that runs beside the church, and I could see my friend D. at the corner. She waved cheerfully when we got closer, and I went to her window and told her that I'd be right back, but Mike was at home. My other friend J. was behind her, and just as cheerful to be on her way to de-wreck my house. I dropped Christian off and made it back, but I was willing them to have changed their minds the whole way home.
I walked in the door and there they were, waiting with buckets, mops, brooms, gloves, and cleaner. They had even taken their shoes off, according to our house rule. These ladies looked at me and said,"What do you want us to do? Where do we start?"
I wanted to say,"Nothing! You can go!" But...that probably would have been rude, and Mike had spent all that time cleaning up so that it wasn't so, so bad. And it was obvious they weren't leaving. I still wasn't sure what to say. What do you say?! What do you say to women that you know, who know your house is a mess and have come to pick it up for you?
I felt a little awkward.
So, they just picked their respective areas and jobs and got busy. J. had the Swiffer (not the vacuum, but the dry cloth only) going to town under all the furniture. D. had the vacuum on in no time, hose and wand out, getting in the corners and up to the ceiling. And the extra friend that they finagled into coming, C., went for the kitchen. She picked a spot and said,"I am very good at getting rid of clutter! What's this? Do you need this?" Pretty soon, she had most of the mess on the back counter in our kitchen cleaned up, the junk drawer cleaned out, and was working on another drawer that I had never used.
I feel that I need to stop and explain something here. (By the way, I'm sensing this is going to be a long post, so if you aren't into that, I understand. Or, if you want to read it in segments, that's cool too.) There are many areas of our home that have been off-limits. We rent, and the house is old and hasn't been particularly well-cared for. Unless we were going to remove drawers, sand, and repaint them, I didn't want to use them. It's not even that they were that disgusting (in fact, at least one of them had been cleaned by a sweet lady when we first moved in, who was helping us get settled), but in my head, they weren't clean enough, and could never be clean enough. That's what OCD does...it is irrational, but unshakable. (Yes, I know there is medication for things like that. No, I haven't gone that route yet. Let's just say that is material for another post, hmmm?) But C. and I lined the drawers with some contact paper and that was that. She was very matter-of-fact, encouraging, and cheerful. (Notice a theme with these ladies?) I left her in the kitchen for a minute to go check on what the other women were getting into. And also to wring my hands.
After lunch C. had to run, but just as she left, the woman with whom I had eaten on Friday showed up and took C.'s place in the kitchen. If you remember, this is the lady who is an organizer by trade. She undid my kitchen, ya'll. She took everything off of the shelves, and out of cabinets and my pantry. She was an organizing maniac, but the most steady and methodical one you ever saw. This woman took my kitchen by the shoulders and gave it a good, hard shake. Maybe even a slap in the face. She meant business.
The day went on like that. J. and D. went through picking things up, making me look through piles, throwing things away, consolidating rogue toys, and Swiffering. They rearranged furniture. They cleaned some more, and put more stuff in the trash. And then they did the unthinkable.
These women, these ladies that are my friends...they cleaned my bathrooms. Has anyone you know ever cleaned your toilet? Do you know what it's like to have a friend on her hands and knees cleaning your bathroom floor? Have you ever let someone else outside of your family, and not for pay, clean your shower?
If you have never experienced this, let me share with you. It is humiliating. It is humbling. This was an act of service that I did not deserve. It was born of compassion and love. It was a living picture of the grace and mercy of God; I received no lecture, I heard not one word of condemnation, I saw not one look of disgust.
Instead of judging me, they loved me. They loved me when I felt very unlovable. And that is the definition of grace; "You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us." Romans 5:6-8
My friends were living out the gospel for me, they were sacrificing on my behalf so that I could reach a place that I couldn't get to on my own.
Three of these women were able to come back on Tuesday, one to work in the kitchen some more, and the others, J. and D., to hang things on the walls, and do some more furniture adjusting. It was a fun day. Actually, both days were fun. There was a lot of laughter in the house, a lot of joking. There were tears, but there was healing. Moving forward. Change.
And it wasn't all that hard in the end.
Now that you have spent an hour reading I want to show you the fruit of their labors. I have before and after pictures, and it's kind of funny that I even have the before ones. I took them in order to show my sister-in-law just how crazy it was around here one night. The before pictures are of the house at a particularly bad point. By the time my friends arrived Monday morning, Mike had done a good deal of cleaning up, and I had cleaned up the schoolroom recently so that it didn't look like the picture I'll show anymore. It's a little hard to show these pictures, and Mike might croak; it's a vulnerable thing to do. I'm showing you my Very Ugly. But the contrast is so shocking that I think it's worth sharing.
This is what you saw when you walked in the door. The stairs are straight ahead, and the bench was always a mess. What a lovely greeting for our guests!
This table was also in the entry, just to the right of the stairs' beginning. Theoretically it was going to be really cute, warm and cozy. A sweet little spot for tossing our keys and for odds-and-ends that we needed as we headed out the door. The umbrella hanging on the lamp added a great deal to the wonderful ambience this composition created.
We got rid of the bench (to another spot), relocated a table from the living room, and switched out another table to the right of the steps. They hung things on the wall, too. (The mirror was my idea!)
From our front door you can also see into the living room. It was a sight. Our bookshelves never recovered from a previous arrangement, and were spaced crazily, two on one side, two on the other. Over the last few months they (the bookshelves, of course) began hoarding toys and bins in the front there. I especially loved the yellow truck on that one shelf. And please note the angle of the chair. Feng shui at its finest, folks.
The ladies absconded with the small table in the entry, and filled in the gap between the bookshelves with it and a plant. A colorful picture made its way onto the wall, and maybe one day we will frame it, so that it fills up that space better. (This is a work in progress, you see.) The most difficult job? Turning the chair 45º. I think that took all four of us.
This is the before of the other end of the living room. Yes, we have a lot of strange things in there, but...it is what it is (and you must say that exactly the way Daisy says it to her daughter in the hospital in the movie The Curious Case of Benjamin Button-that is to say, with the voice of a woman who is 113). I really don't mind the piano and the drum set.
They hung the picture on the left, and the clock. And then we just tidied things up (there was a lot of consolidation...to be taken care of at a later date). My favorite thing that got done was the fixing of the rug. J. helped me move the coffee table, and then lay a non-skid pad down under the rug. Now it hopefully won't creep across the floor until it's in the fireplace! (Note to self: Find home for vacuum.)
Moving from the living room, we enter the computer room (or the TV room). The piles that were running along the wall, beyond the bike, I had taken care of recently in a mad fit of cleaning up. But this room was a bit off-kilter and uncentered.
Just a few tweaks made a huge difference. They changed out the map (now in Christian's room) for the picture of a field (another idea of mine!) and put the coffee table back in place. They also reoriented the rug and turned the bike a little. The shelves in this room are still a wreck, but that is a job for another day.
The front of the room...
and its new look.
All right, here goes the huge swallowing of pride. Obviously, there are issues to address other than our own messy areas. The kids do what they see us do. Maybe this is an easy excuse, but much of this year I have not had the energy to get them to clean up. Our family life has been a tad bizarre for a while, to say the least, and I won't go into great detail about that. We are looking forward to a time, very soon, when we can make some much needed changes as far as our family dynamic goes. Know that we know how to be (relatively) good parents...and pray that God will grant us the strength needed in order to make the changes we need to make. That being said, here is the schoolroom at its worst. Highly conducive to learning, no? Someone couldn't find Sasquatch in there, much less a pencil.
The ladies moved the table over to the sliding glass doors, and floated the couch in the center of the room. There is still quite a large space for playing in front of the sofa; the rooms in our house are big.
We moved the shelf from the kitchen into this room, so that I can store bins of whatever on it. It holds a ton, and even though there is a lot of shelving and cabinetry in this room, I had some big bins that I wanted to store on this shelf. I had been wanting to do this for a while, but it seemed like such a big job to unload the kitcheny stuff and get it down the hall. Apparently not when you are my auntie-friend. (The little blue table was set up with the TV on it the other day to keep Eliana entertained while we were working...it is not going to stay there.)
Now we are moving to the other side of the house. The dining room. This lovely piece of work, well, I don't even have words for it. It was not good for my Flat Surface Syndrome. The table was the perfect catch-all. There was stitching paraphernalia. There were air filters (of course). There were newspapers. There were Lego creations. There was a box of play-dough and cutters. All of these things were very important to have in the dining room. Very.
I have no idea where it all went. I'm guessing a great deal of it got thrown away. The Lego creations were moved to a shelf for display. The stitching stuff is actually back at the school and I never have to look at that basket again. This is amazing to me. (The transformation, not that I never have to look at the stitching again.)
My mom's rack is hung! (That is a crazy sentence, but it's staying.) It's so cute! I'll have to do a close-up sometime. Hey, that Swiffer is hiding behind the small buffet. I suppose it was thinking it deserved a place in the photo, since it played such an important part in all of the shenanigans that went on around here those two days.
And now we come to the kitchen. Beyond disaster. It's a galley kitchen, long and narrow. Whenever I'm in there I have three monkeys stuffed up in my armpits, standing on my feet, hanging all over me. They just want to be in there, and with me. You can see the ugly bookshelf in the back, and the clutter in general. There was always too much stuff, a lot of it didn't belong in the kitchen, and I hated to think about moving it all. So I didn't.
But J. did. I'm telling you, she was like the Tazmanian Devil, but instead of leaving a trail of destruction behind, she left order and cuteness.
One of my favorite things we have is the sign hanging on the wall below. I bought the W-A-L-K-E-R tiles in Spain, after Mike and I were engaged, and before we were married. Years later I bought yellow, white, and blue tile squares and a piece of wood, made up a design, applied grout, and had it framed for Mike for his birthday. We have never hung it before. But now, there it is, like a claim stake, brightly pronouncing,"This is our home!"
Above, you can see that we moved the table into the kitchen (which I had wanted to do, but how could I when it was so solidly anchored in the dining room with all that important stuff on it?) so that the kids could have a place to hang out while I was busy cooking (or whatever it is that I do in the kitchen...I wouldn't really call it cooking). The first night that it was in there, I was at the counter and Christian and Eliana were sitting there coloring. It was so peaceful, and I didn't have any little people under my arm or up my...well, you get the picture.
Here is one of my cabinets. I know. It leaves me speechless as well. Remember I don't use my kitchen drawers (roaches and all that...some paranoia in my head. Whatever.) so the stuff that normally lives in a drawer made its home in strange places.
J. is good at what she does, no?
You haven't seen anything, yet. Here is my laundry room. Which is really just the back of my kitchen. And which is always a mess.
The after...
When I said she took everything out of my cabinets and pantry, I WAS. NOT. KIDDING. She put like things together, from light bulbs to tomato products.
In the pantry we now have (from the top down) coffee/teas, soups/canned beans, sugars/syrups/baking, pasta/rice, pasta sauce/canned tomatoes/salsa, drink related items on the floor (in bins). Facing these shelves is a small rolling cart with cereal, snacks, and large Ziploc bags.
It all has a place.
There are still some areas that need work. There are things that Mike and I really need to go through and organize. But what these women did is just amazing. I feel like I have a lot of words, but no words are sufficient. I am so grateful for what they have done, for what they have given to me. They have brought a light to a dark room; they have cleared thorns from a path; they have pulled a drowning woman from a raging sea.
The truth is that only the Lord can do those things. He is the light of the world. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. He is the One who takes the dead and breathes life into them. Only he can save. My eternity is due only to him. But in the here and now, he does those things as well. He gives water to those who thirst, he heals those who are broken, he redeems the one who is enslaved. And most of the time he uses regular people to do his work in our lives. Because of friends, we are able to see our Savior. Because of people who love us, we are able to know even deeper his great love for us. Because his love is even more unimaginable than we can know. It is even more unthinkable than friends who clean our toilets. It is his beautiful life of love for his father, and for his world; it is his horrible death on a cross; it is his powerful and miraculous resurrection and victory over death and sin. It's hard enough to grasp what a friend will do for me, how can I grasp this amazing love of God?
But grasp I must, and cling.
I have been blessed beyond measure this week. I pray that I will be an instrument of the Lord's grace one day, that I can minister to another the way these women ministered to me. And I pray that you may know the love of a friend, as well as the even deeper love of God.
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