Spring Cleaning

I've been on a cleaning spree lately. It's fun, it's freeing, and very rewarding. I started with the girl's room. They were so excited because I promised to rearrange the furniture. Women after my heart. (Guys don't get this by the way. Leon jokes that when he finally finds the couch, I move it again.) So plan of action in place, we were going to clean the girls room. I use 'we' loosely, because I was really hoping it to be more of a 'me' project than a 'we' project. You see, my girls are 5 and 7 and they love stuff, lots of stuff, and their treasures are definitely my trash. I'm a pitch-er. I have been a pitch-er ever since I left my pack rat stage way back in my childhood. So I have high hopes for them, too.

We started with me helping them clean out their treasure drawers. Annika actually pitched quite a bit of stuff. Brooklyn, on the other hand, pitched nothing and wanted to rescue Annika's stuff from the trash can. We organized and I sent them on their way. It was a sunny Saturday and they were glad to play outside. I tried to not get carried away with their trinkets that sit around the room but when I found a 12 oz. Styrofoam cup on their bookshelf full of gravel  pretty rocks, I sighed deeply. Seriously. A plan began to form in my mind. The cup went with me the next time I went downstairs and I set in on my counter in an out-of-sight place.

An hour later the boys needed a ride to a neighbors pond to go fishing, so as I left to take them there, I snuck the cup outside, made sure no one was looking, and threw the rocks in a rut in our driveway. (Yes, we have those here on the farm.) Five minutes later, as I drove back in the lane after dropping off the boys, what did I find but my girls standing by the rut and exclaiming over the bee-you-ti-ful rocks that were there! "Mom, how did these pretty rocks get here?" In all their exclaiming, I never had to answer them, and a few rocks did make their way back into the house. Sigh. At least I got rid of MOST of them.

Which reminds me of the time that I begged Leon to find a job for the boys because they needed something to do. This was 3-4 years ago. He grinned and drove out the lane. When he returned a bit later, he said, "Boys, I want you to go ride your bikes up the road and see if you can find any pop cans in the ditch." (Yes, we say 'pop'. If you have a problem with that, I guess you're not from 'round these parts.) They headed off on their bikes with grocery bags hanging on the handle bars. When they came back I was a little surprised to see only Mountain Dew cans in the bags. I found out later that when Leon drove out the lane, he was pitching his OWN cans into the ditch. Now that's resourceful, folks. Please tell me that we aren't the only parents who do stuff like this.

This cleaning fever I have also gets me to go through our totes of clothes and sort and organize clothes for the children for summer. I get to make my garage sale list, one of my favorite jobs of the whole year. Then I move to the guest room and set up my bags for consignment and Goodwill. The piles grow and I smile because all this purging makes me so happy.

Yesterday I took a deep breath and tackled the mud room. Oh my. Although Jamison's good friend declared on Sunday that he loved the smell of that room, I did not! I sorted out too small boots and coats and washed gloves and hats and coveralls and mopped up mud and manure and mouse poop. When I was all finished, I looked around and it was still the half dry-walled, half not, ancient paint job, crummy looking room it had been before but at least it was orderly and smelled like Pine-sol instead of pig, chicken or lamb manure. I breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction.

Today I helped the children pick up a large amount of sticks from our row of pine trees. Leon cleared a whole bunch of scrub trees and mulberry trees the other night and we have a future bonfire pile that's just crazy big! I love my children and I love to work. My children love me most of the time too, but they do not always like to work. A certain child had a fierce back ache this morning during school, it disappeared until time to pick up sticks, then returned with a vengeance. Some things I'll never understand.

All this spring cleaning fever has also made me want to dust off my poor forsaken blog. And that's why I sat down tonight.

There are a lot of analogies I could draw from the rock story. I like to think it was a reminder for me to delight in what I have, even if I've seen it before. The beauty is still there. Even if I remind, instruct, disciple, train, teach, discipline them every day. They are still my children. They are still the beautiful treasures they were the first time I heard their heartbeat or the first time I laid eyes on them. And though I get extremely weary at times and feel like nothing I do really makes a difference, I am reminded that each one of them is precious and a priceless gift. And so tonight I smile, I hug, I forgive. Today was hard. But I choose to extend grace, to freely love, to delight in them, and to press on. Because really- the best example of Jesus with skin on could just be me.