January-February 1998
Lord! Meet Me in the Laundry Room!
by Barbara Curtis
I can't believe it's morning already. The alarm sounds thick and far away. My eyelids stay stubbornly at half-mast. Six o'clock and already the day's not adding up: Although I went to bed at 11, I feel like I've only gotten a few hours' sleep.
With the shock of a shipwreck it hits me-I have only gotten a few hours' sleep.
Awareness comes in waves, with glimpses of scenes from the night before: Joshua coughing up a storm quelled only with cough syrup, Benjamin sobbing for a prayer to soothe away a bad dream, baby Jonathan calling for his lullaby tape, Zachary's wet bed.
"Count it all joy," I mutter as I sit up and -- not wanting to break my meager momentum -- lunge for the laundry room.
The slick linoleum under my feet is a wake-up call. Once over the threshold, my body carries me through the familiar routine of stuffing sheets into the washer, measuring soap and setting dials.
| Here is where, like a shipwrecked survivor, I grab the life preserver of the Lord. |
The whoosh of the water into the machine is refreshing, like a splash of cool water on my face.
Contemplating the mounds of clothes around me, I am reminded and reassured: "I lift up my eyes to the hills -- where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth" (Psalm 121:1-2).
Here is where I get a second wind. Here is where, like a shipwrecked survivor, I grab the life preserver of the Lord. Because, Lord knows, he is the only one who can get me through this day.
It wasn't always this way. I used to think my laundry room was just a laundry room. But it became something more.
A Special Prayer Closet
I was a new Christian nine years ago when I first heard the term "prayer closet," and began to feel inadequate. Someone might say something like, "She fled to her prayer closet and poured her heart out to the Lord." I wanted a prayer closet to flee to, too. So I would hurry home to look for any previously uncharted territory to call my own. But with the hordes in my house, I could find nowhere with the sustained privacy necessary for even a prayer shoe box.
One day, as I was unrolling a multitude of balled-up socks for the washer, I prayed: "Lord, is there a prayer closet somewhere for me? And what about this thing they call 'quiet time'?"
"Aren't you praying now?" This question was wordlessly impressed upon my heart.
"Yes, but Lord" and things began to spill out of my heart that I hardly knew were there.
I didn't have to tell him how hard it was to feel like a lightweight when others had more spiritual muscles to flex. I didn't have to tell him how much I wanted to be the best I could be, and how far from the best I often felt. I didn't have to tell him because he already knew. But since he was listening, I told him anyway.
Somehow I was made to understand that a mother of toddlers just isn't like anyone else. I felt comforted, I felt loved, I felt like he cared for me just as I was. Maybe I cried a little. Probably I laughed as well. I did a lot of praying and a lot of laundry before we were through.
And so my laundry room became my prayer closet. This is where I meet the Lord each morning before my children awake, and at intervals throughout the day as I transfer clothes from baskets to washer, from washer to dryer, from dryer to baskets again. In these 12- and 20-minute snatches, I have found my quiet time.
I have never had any trouble finding God in my laundry room. He is always ready to receive my praise, my thanks, my prayers for family and friends, my joys and heartaches, too.
My 3-year-old son, Jonathan, spent his first two years in and out of the hospital. My laundry room, with its reassuring routine and memories of mornings with God, became the most comfortable place for me when I could not be at my son's side.
People must have questioned my sanity when I staggered home from the hospital and made a beeline for the laundry room. How could I explain what it had become?
More Moms Like Me?
Many prayers and loads of laundry later, I now wonder if there are other mothers like me -- mothers too busy wiping peanut butter and jelly off little faces and kissing "owies" to maintain the practice of what the less encumbered call quiet time.
Are there mommies whose prayer closets are buckets and scrub brushes, sewing baskets, garden patches or car pools? Are there mommies whose prayer closets are assembly lines or switchboards or operating rooms? Are there mommies squeezing moments of quiet time between customer calls or the clamor of kids?
I wonder because now I understand that God is bigger than any place I set aside to meet him, and as near as I invite him to be.
Before too long, the hum of my steadfast machines is joined by the predictably unpredictable noises of my many children. I'm ready for those precious sleep-snatchers now, ready for whatever the day will bring.
And besides, maybe if I can get Madeleine and Jonathan down for a nap at the same time, I can catch up on a little sleep.
That way I'll be more rested for another night tossed to and fro on the busy sea of motherhood.
Barbara Curtis conducts frequent workshops for mothers of toddlers and has been published in more than 35 magazines. She and her husband, Tripp, keep busy with their 11 children, ages 28 to 1.