Previous Challenge Entry (Level 1 – Beginner)
Topic: Happy (07/12/07)
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TITLE: The Laundry Room | Previous Challenge Entry
By Bliss Gordon
07/19/07 -
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The mobile played the sleepy song and gently spun four dancing elephants above the baby’s crib – four brightly bobbing colors of red, blue, green and yellow. The young mother sang the words softly as her baby fell asleep and she sat for a minute of repose on the edge of her bed to fold the day’s laundry.
“You make me happy when skies are gray.”
She smiled and thought about the precious child who would one day grow up and the gray skies their family would encounter. She and her husband would discipline and train this child in the way he should go, but the best of their efforts and abilities would not secure a guarantee of his productive and God-honoring life. She knew beyond the physical work of sacrifice and service that she would spend many years on her knees for that baby to grow into a character of service and love for the Lord. Much like dirty laundry, the mother thought. Life is a cycle, of getting dirty and going through the discipline to be made clean, only to go back out and try the job again.
Washing! The laundry indeed! She smiled to herself at her connection of laundry and life. When she was little, the most dreaded place of the home was the laundry room. It was located directly off the kitchen and dinning area where she and the other seven members of her family scrunched around the table for meals. It was normally at the dinner table when Dad found out about someone’s misbehaving that day and punishment was administered. Dad, one of her four brothers, and one of Momma’s giant wooden spoons would quickly be concealed behind the closed laundry room door.
‘Son,’ they would hear from behind the heavy wooden door, ‘I’m doing this because I love you. Someday you will understand.’
Whack! Those at the table would grimace and look at each other in sympathizing pain. Why did love have to hurt so much?
“You’ll never know dear, how much I love you.”
The young mother smiled thoughtfully and fondly looked at her sleeping baby. She wondered what it would be like to raise that precious bundle.
She, personally, had not been in the laundry room very often as a child. Not in that one anyway. But in recent years her Heavenly Father drew her into His several times. She was in it now. Why was correction so difficult for her to receive? Why did she have to fall so many times? Why did she unintentionally disobey? Why couldn’t she delight in pleasing Him the way she delighted in pleasing her Mom and Dad when she was little? Why wasn’t it as easy now as it was then?
“Please don’t take my sunshine away.”
She thought about the time when she would discipline her own baby. She would do it; she would punish him when he needed, she would spank him when he deserved it, and say no, and withhold privileges. He would have his own time in the laundry room, and he wouldn’t like it. But she would do it anyway.
Why? Because she loved him. She wanted the best for him, and wanted him to grow up to become the man God intended. Despite all she would never leave him or forsake him, her precious own son.
“Please don’t take my sunshine away!”
She knew she needed His laundry room right now. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it took time and determination to change for His glory. And yes, it was completely worth every bit of His discipline. She knew He loved her and was doing His best to bring her fully into the woman that He intended for her. He would never leave her or forsake her, His own precious daughter.
She folded the last of her husband’s shirts, and reached to her nightstand. “Happy are the people, whose God is the LORD,” she breathed in a smiling whisper as she opened her worn, leather bound Bible.*
Job 5:17 “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects: therefore do not despise the
chastening of the Almighty.”
*Psalm 144:15
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