My sink needed caution tape. There was a lasagna pan filled with cold water, a few rogue noodles floating, one corner black from a re-warm.
Hardcore life before 8 a.m. for sure, but last night we were determined to make progress on a puzzle manufactured by sadists, so the pan spent a dark, wet night in the sink.
The Kitchen Fairy skipped our house (something about working conditions) so I scrubbed the cold, slimy mess while I talked myself though.
Fire up the hot water, we can melt it off. Hot water negative, noodles holding on for dear life.
Switch to scrapers. But the gunk left on the end of the dish scrubber!!
Better gunk on hard plastic than grease filling up the sponge. I think I’ll let it soak a while longer, finish after I pay the bills.
You’re almost done now, keep moving. Shower door tracks win hands down over gross pans.
But you’re almost D.O.N.E! I can’t do this anymore, too.much.blackened.noodle.slime.
Don’t Stop Now, you can handle this! I just want it clean.
Switch to manual sponges. But they’re gross!!!!
Target is locked and loaded, steady now, you’re almost done. Switching to manual spongeesssss.
There’s something about dirty pans and slimy showers that bring out the quitter in me. You’d think that I would have learned by now to flip the autopilot switch and just do the junk of life without a whole lot of fuss but for whatever reason, I don’t.
I listen to the whiny baby inside my head far too long before I actually get down to it and do the gross work.
Really, for the amount of time I whine in my head about something, I could have finished it and three more disgusting jobs. I mentally quit before I even start and have to put all my energy into self-talk just to break even.
It’s one of the things I’m constantly working on. When it comes to toughing out the rough things in life, finances, relationships, even sometimes faith, I’m usually committed but not before I’ve thrown a fit-fest sure to out-fit the most expressive three year old.
There are relationships that are difficult for me right now, a whole group of them.
I’ve been putting some healthier ways of relating into practice over the last couple of years but there’s some baked-on junk still sticking to the sides and I’m over it. It’s taken a lot of strategic work to remove bad habits I developed mostly because my relationships were rooted in different kinds of fear. But finally, I hope, the majority of my thinking and relating is more healthy than not and so it doesn’t surprise me that I’m have to work a little harder to keep myself motivated these days.
I think that’s how the disciples felt in Luke 5. They’d been fishing all night with nothing but grimy gunk caught in their nets and they were over it. Hungry. Ready to hang up their nets and order take-out. Their feet were cold, hands were dirty and stomachs were growling and I’m quite certain they were on each other’s last nerve. The lasagna pan had more baked-on crud than they could handle and the thought of switching to sponges was just too much. They were ready to call it a night, go home.
And then Jesus.
They dropped their nets one more time at his command. I imagine a collective eye-roll as it sunk.
Their job was simply to do what he said, even if it was something they’d done a hundred times before. It wasn’t like he gave them a new idea, he just simply added his authority to their process. If they would’ve quit , they would have missed out on a miracle that would fuel their faith for the rest of their lives.
I need that authority and that kind of power to sludge through right now, and I’m sure you do too.
Whatever you’ve got going on today, and however sick you are of dealing with a mess that just won’t seem to come clean, stick with the honest work believing that at some point, Jesus will add his power to it. When we finally come to the end of ourselves….again, what happens next can be powerful.
The list of not-quite-finished in my life is long, but I’m switching to sponges.
Marcy Holder 