Someday I'll Get a Maid

So one night I'm at my prayer group, and we're, you know, praying. When it was my turn to be prayed over, someone asked God to give me a special gift that would fill my heart up. So of course, when we got home, I started listing all the things that I might want. (Cause, you know, I'm so mature and ... um... not greedy.)

After running my mind over the possibilities - especially a treadmill so that I can go running - I finally thought to myself that what I really would like - what would really put my heart at peace - is a clean, uncluttered house.

Two days later, I woke and read Jennifer Fulwiler's post about stay-at-home moms getting domestic help. Hmm. I thought. I think God's saying something here.

So I emailed it to my husband. Who promptly emailed back telling me that I'm not getting a maid.

Being a self-centered enlightened modern woman, I ignored him and started looking up online to find out how much a maid service would cost. When I finally got back a reply, I discovered that only the once-a-month rate might potentially be feasible for us, even though a biweekly cleaning sounded so much better. I decided to pray, hoping that God would see fit to provide us the money for what I wanted. A bit later, doing something different, I came across the following Scripture verse (my emphasis):

Rev 22:1-5 Then the angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of its street. On either side of the river grew the tree of life that produces fruit twelve times a year, once each month; the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will look upon his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord God shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever.

I instantly had a mental picture of life-giving water pouring over my house, cleaning everything out and making it all "sparkle like crystal". Ok, God, I can settle for once a month; I'm just happy you're saying yes to this.

This was followed by about a gazillion references to waiting patiently, "the time is not yet", be patient, wait for it, and so on. So, I don't know when this maid service thing might happen¹. In the meantime, I'm trying to do more cleaning myself² and I'm also putting more effort into training the kids³ to be in the habit of cleaning.

But I'm also waiting expectantly for God to carry through on his promise.



<sup>1. Maybe the next time I get pregnant. That would be an especially useful time to have maid service, I think.

2. That will be a future post. If I can ever manage to make enough progress that a photograph could count as an "after" picture.

3. Cause we all know how helpful the kids are. Seriously, am I the only one who has noticed how some issue seems to come up in a whole lot of blogs all at once? Simcha wrote that piece, Jen wrote her first take here, about her kids cleaning, right at the same time that I had been inspired by the lovely ladies at Like Mother, Like Daughter blog to get my kids more involved. It's like God has a plan or something.</sup>