I Hate Dishes – Or Do I?

I grew up in the old days without a dishwasher.

Yes, Boys, your Mom grew up in the days before dishwashers or cable TV (you will never understand tin foil wrapped rabbit ears on top of the television). I grew up in the days when a hand held device would have meant a sponge or, if it was my brother’s turn for dishes maybe I’d have thought you meant a pencil (do you even know what that is???) or a toothbrush (there are nights I wonder if you know what that is too!)

Yes, every dish was done by hand and the worst of all to wash, even worse than that pot with the burned whatever in the bottom of it, was the silverware.

Just when you thought you had finished and you drain all the water out of the sink bottom, accompanied by that beautiful,  but totally disgusting sucking noise that means the sink is now empty, you look down to sees sink full of silverware, silverware that had been hiding beneath the soap bubbles, silverware that takes forever to wash so there’s none of the instant gratification from doing the big dishes and clearing space quickly, silverware with nasty food incrusted between fork tines, silverware that lays in the bottom of that sink mocking you just when you think you’re done.

Today, I have a dishwasher and am amazed when my boys grumble about having to fill or empty it. I find myself slipping into stories like this,

“When I was a kid, I had to wash dishes by hand while walking uphill, barefoot, in the snow, both ways!”

Today, my aggravation about dishes has shifted from finding that silverware laying in the bottom of the suck-noise making sink to the aggravation of turning on the dishwasher and then walking through my house to find dishes, mostly cups, laying everywhere. The boys will take a cup to do homework, a new cup to play whiffle ball outside, another cup for dinner and then forget to put it away when they clear their plates (another pet peeve of this Mom!), and a cup of water for bed.

Do the math:  5 Boys x 4 cups = 20 cups

Chances are good I’ll miss one of them somewhere along the line!

And I would get aggravated, sometimes I still do, but the emotion I feel more than any other is

GRATITUDE

Thank God! Thank God we live in a country where one of my biggest issues is empty cups around the house. Thank God We live in a country where we CAN do dishes. Thank God I can afford 20 cups. Thank God my Boys are healthy and active enough to play whiffle ball together (and fight about every game!) Thank God my kids do their homework. Thank God they are getting an education in books rather than in survival of the fittest.

Thank God.

I think about all that is going on in the world today:

• the slaughter of Christians on that mountain top in Iraq (the beheading of children, the slow death from hunger and thirst, the cruxifiction, the hunting down like animals of human beings all for the crime of Loving Jesus)
• the kidnap and rape of young girls, the “forced marriage” (STOP! This is legalized SLAVERY and legalized RAPE! STOP using euphemisms for these poor, suffering, terror stricken girls! These women are no more married than Ariel Castro’s victims were!)
• the burning of churches, the martyrdom of silent victims, silent cries that are cannot actually be silent but are silent to us because we refuse to hear them,
• the slavery of young African children taken from their play yards, from poverty stricken families that know their greatest asset and worst liability is the Love they have for one another, and brought across national borders to live a life of cruel isolation and work long, dangerous jobs with little food and no medical care day in and day out, crying alone in the dark every night until the feeling inside them dies and they wished they would die too all so we can have cheap chocolate? 

And we don’t change our way of life to help them.

because it’s “too hard” for us to hear

or because we think there’s nothing we can do anyway

or because we are wrapped up in our own struggles over things like dishes.

This is not an easy topic to explore, but when we talk about being

one body in Christ

and then turn our backs on the suffering of others, what are we doing to ourselves?

We must change the way we act to help them.

Please, pray for these people, send letters to your representatives, stop buying chocolate involved in childhood slavery (Mars, Nestle, Hershey – all use child slaves!), post about this on Facebook and Twitter, don’t let the media get away with silence, in a world that doesn’t have to rely on major newscasts for its news,

YOU can make a difference!

But will You?

By all means, grumble about the dishes. I sure will!

But, at the same time, be so thankful that that is what we grumble about.

What will you do today, right now, and every day no matter how wearying it gets, to help those suffering in lands you will never see? How will those people greet you in Heaven one day? 

Thank you for reading and sharing information about these and many other atrocities. We can make a difference!

This post was written in response to a linkup with Charity at The Wounded Dove. Join her every Tuesday, where she does a much more lighthearted post than I did today!

Photo credit: pedrojperez from morguefile.com

God Bless…