Thankful for dirt?

dusty vents add dust to your house!

Last week, we had the annual service to our furnace.  Mr. Furnace guy told me that our whole system had to be vacuumed out.  (cha-ching).

I made the appointment, and Mr. Vacuum man came out yesterday. I was prepared for a morning of noise. I almost forgot to uncover the vents – like the one under my dresser, which is huge. With a little help from my youngest, our house was prepared for Mr. Noisy Vacuum man, and I proceeded to clean my way through Tuesday.

Those of you who follow my facebook know that I was thinking of finding a housekeeper some time back. Instead, I decided that the exercise would do me good, and I’d figure out a way around my allergies. So,  Tuesdays, I become little (ha) Miss Maid, and clean my way to a smaller fanny.

As I was shaking out a rug, I listened to my self-talk. “My life has become a slave to a clean house, I am caring waaay too much about the details” I heard my heart complain. Later in the day, my list of fun things to do (write, study, work up a page for Caitlyn’s upcoming missions trip) remained the same because cleaning and organizing had taken up so much of the day, and my heart complained some more.

Wow Kim – you sound like a whiny person! So, you mentioned being thankful for dirt? Yes! Sometimes, when our kids are small, we guide them to right behavior. Other times, we just tell them what to do or think – we lay down the law and inform them how they should think. The best cure for a whiny heart is a thankful heart. So, I instructed myself to become thankful, and here is some of my list:

• I have a house to clean.
• With minimal (comparatively) effort, my house can look reasonably nice.
• I have time in my schedule to not only clean, but improve on last week a bit so we are gaining in order, and twice a week, my family gets a bona fide dinner.
• Moving that heavy dresser brought it’s own reward:  I found a missing earring.

Sometimes, we go through difficult patches. I had one of those last winter. Every day was a drudgery. Every day I wanted to quit and stay in bed.

My day in the dirt shows us this: even on the most difficult days, you will find surprises and points of joy if you get up and move the dirt around a bit.