Two Weeks Of Doing It In The Tub

Fourteen days.

And the part that nobody sees is not the washing. The washing is the least of it and you have got quite efficient at it.

It is the wringing. The forearms, at about eleven at night, doing the twisting motion over the side of the tub for the fourth time on a set of jeans that will not give up their water, and the noise the water makes going back in, and the fact that the thing still weighs more than it should when you finally give up and hang it.

That is the actual shape of this. Not two weeks of inconvenience. Two weeks of a specific physical task performed late, alone, in a small room, by one person.

And before anything else in this article I want to say plainly that it is hard.

Not character building. Not simpler, the way people say when they have not done it. Hard, in the ordinary sense, in the arms and the back and the hour it takes out of every evening.

Nobody has said that to you yet, and it needed saying first, because everything else in this piece depends on it being true.

You are doing a job that a machine used to do and not going without, and the long way round has never once been the same thing as failing to manage.

Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily

There is an instruction about work that was originally written to people whose work nobody saw, and that is why it lands here.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. (Colossians 3:23, King James Version)

As to the Lord, and not unto men. That is the part to stop on.

He is dealing with people whose labor went entirely unwitnessed. Nobody thanked them. Nobody knew what any particular day had cost. And rather than telling them to demand recognition, he moves the whole audience.

You are working in front of somebody who sees the whole of it, and a job nobody in the house has noticed has never once been a job that went unwitnessed. The Holy Spirit is the one present in a bathroom at eleven at night with a pair of forearms, and Colossians 3:23 moves the audience from men to the Lord in one clause.

Now the word heartily, which is easy to read as cheerfully and is not that.

Heartily is from the heart, wholly, with the actual self in it rather than with the hands only. It is a word about engagement and not about mood. A person can do a thing heartily and be extremely tired and not enjoy any of it.

You are permitted to do this wholly and hate it at the same time, and a job done from the heart has never once required the person doing it to feel good about the job. The written word asks for the whole self and says nothing at all about the mood, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman be genuinely worn out and not be failing.

And whatsoever ye do is worth a sentence too.

Whatsoever. He does not grade the tasks. He does not say the significant work should be done heartily and the small work can be got through somehow. Whatever it is. Including the fourth pair of jeans over the side of a bath.

You are doing something that Scripture refused to rank as small, and a tub of wet clothes at eleven at night has never once been beneath the notice of the verse. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in the small room where the work is actually happening, and Colossians 3:23 says whatsoever and leaves the category open.

Coping is the wrong word

Something practical, and it is about a word that has been doing damage.

The word is coping. As in: we are coping. It is what gets said at the school gate and to the woman at work and to your mother on the phone, and it is said lightly, and it is doing something that has not been noticed.

Because coping quietly means enduring a deficit. It says there is a hole and I am managing around it, and the managing is a kind of loss.

That is not what is happening in that bathroom. What is happening is that a job is being done. Differently, slowly, by hand, and the clothes come out clean at the end of it, which is the whole point of the exercise.

You have been calling a completed job a deficit for fourteen days, and clean clothes on a rail have never once been the output of a household that is going without. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the small room where the doing happens, and Colossians 3:23 counts the doing itself rather than the method.

Now the second thing, and it is the harder one to actually do.

Let somebody in the house hold the other end.

Not take over. Hold the other end. The wringing of a sheet is a two person job and has been since sheets existed, and one person doing it alone over a bath is doing a job designed for two.

You are not in deficit and the work is being completed, and a household whose laundry gets done by hand has never once been a household going without. The written word treats the doing itself as the thing that counts, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in the completion rather than in the method.

And I know the objections. It is faster alone. They do it wrong. It takes longer to ask than to do. Every one of those is true and none of them is the reason.

The reason is that being the only one who knows how hard it is has become part of the load, and that part is optional.

You have people in this house who are allowed to know what this takes, and a second pair of hands on a wet sheet has never once been an admission that you could not manage. The Holy Spirit is the one who frees a woman to be seen by the people in her own house too, and Colossians 3:23 puts the work in front of the Lord rather than in front of an audience.