Lessons from the Laundromat

I spent about an hour and a half at the laundromat yesterday. I hate the laundromat. Clean clothes aside, the laundromat has few redeeming qualities. The air is hot and laced with lint. The television is usually tuned into some mindless drivel like Rachael Ray. The dryers are way too small for our king-sized comforters, requiring the constant stop-fluff-start process so our comforters don't roll into something resembling one of our daughter's slippers -- dry and toasty on the outside, moist and vulgar on the inside. Then there is the issue of time. The laundromat is Stephen Covey's Waterloo. And mine. It is located in a small strip mall with a sandwich shop and a health food store; unless I want a hoagie and a dose of nutritional yeast, there's no doubling up on errands. I put the laundry in, and I wait. I move it to the dryer, and I wait (and stop-fluff-start, stop-fluff-start). Occasionally, there are people at the laundromat with whom I can kibitz -- I mean really kibitz, not just the, "Hey, do you know where the remote to the TV is?" kind of gab. Yesterday, was a sea of cell phones and earbuds. So, I sat and waited and stopped-fluffed-started. In ninety minutes -- give or take -- I had clean, dry clothes. So what's the problem? I didn't do anything. My role in the cleaning process was minimal at best, and nothing else got done.

Women tend to be naturals at multi-tasking; women who have long rested their self-worth in accomplishments, can take multi-tasking to a whole new level. And believe me, I am just beginning to realize where I have placed my worth for many, many years. Strike that -- God is showing me where I have placed my worth. Not my accomplishment, but His and His alone. It's that quest for worth that drives my desire for accomplishment, and it's that desire for accomplishment that drives my compulsive busyness. And I am totally out of God's will.

First of all, my worth is in Christ and Christ alone. According to Jewish Midrash, Abraham's father, Terah was an idol maker; Abraham, by tradition, would have worked alongside his father, learning the family trade. The Bible confirms he was an idolater. Moses was a murderer who personally failed to make it to his destination -- and he lost quite a few of his charges along the way. Eli, the priest who mentored and cared for Samuel, couldn't manage his own two sons. Samson was a hot mess from beginning to bitter end. God chose them. God used them. God loved them. Their worth was intrinsic, and as a follower of Christ, mine is even more so: God loves and values me because He made me, and God loves me and values me because I am His adopted daughter; His Son lives in me and through me. The way God sees me is unchanging because of who He is, and has nothing to do with how much I do.

And let's talk about what I do. Isaiah 64:6 leaves little doubt:

"But we are all like an unclean thing,And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags;We all fade as a leaf,And our iniquities, like the wind,Have taken us away."

Not merely small or worthless -- disgusting! My agenda, my plans disgust God when I stake my life on them. And that's just what I'm doing if I haven't surrendered those things to God -- I am holding on to my old life, and rejecting the new life purchased for me with Christ's blood at the cross. My accomplishments, the badges I wear, the certificates I hang on my wall are rubbish if they were not earned to be given right back to God.

Lastly, my compulsive busyness. Sin. Sin. Sin. I could write an entire book on the supposed reasons behind compulsive busyness -- mine and anyone else's -- so I won't belabor the point. But if God is not running the show, I am running the show; and that, my friends, is sin. Choosing busyness over any of the things that God has chosen me for, is sin. Plain and simple; cut and dried. (No stop-fluff-start necessary.)