Do The Dishes!

Wanna know something that absolutely drives me up the wall? …Dirty dishes!! When they begin to stack up, overtake the whole sink, and ooze with nastiness I literally can’t function properly until they’re all clean. Have you ever come home from work completely exhausted, looked at the dishes but walked away because it was too much to handle at the moment? Don’t worry, it’s okay because you will take care of them in the morning, right? Yeah... I kept telling myself that.

Do you know what happens when you leave bowls with tomato soup, pans with baked Taquito’s bits hardened on it, plates with tuna fish sandwich remains, cups with old coffee, silverware with peanut butter, Nutella and oatmeal on it, and pans with scrambled egg remains left on it? A whole hodgepodge of nastiness is what you get! And I’m talking about the kind of nastiness that you don’t want to touch, let alone smell because you’ll pass out. You practically are running from each room, opening the windows, lighting all your candles, plugging in all your air fresheners into the walls then running to the bathroom grabbing the Fabreeze bottle and letting the nastiness have it. Okay, I’m being overdramatic, but you get the point. You can try to cover up the smell as long as you want, but eventually you are going to run out of your Vanilla Cupcake scented candle, then what will you do? Eventually you will have to glove up and face the mess because those dishes sure aren’t going to clean themselves like they do in the Beauty and the Beast movie. (That’s the dream!)

Right before I clean the dishes I’ll turn on some Justin Beib’s or some worship music (If the dishes are bad, I will need a whole lot of Jesus to keep me from having a mental breakdown.) get me pumped and ready to scrub and clean to my hearts content. I will grab those green cleaning gloves, turn on that scorching hot water, and douse the dishes in Dawn’s blue original scented soap and become Cinderella. After about an hour, I will have successfully put all the dishes to one side of the sink to dry. It’s the best feeling in the world once all the dishes are put away and I can relax. I feel like David who just defeated the giant, Goliath. 

Its funny how God puts random little metaphors in my head from simple life chores, such as doing the dishes, but it’s great because I love seeing God in everything I do. I can just hear and see God pointing to those dishes in the sink saying, “That’s your heart right now, Olivia. You keep letting the dishes pile up and get dirty because you refuse to face your problems right now due to your business. You wouldn’t have such a stinky mess in the sink if you had come to me each day letting me wash each dirty dish clean. Now, here you are with the mess and you have been trying to fix the problem and clean the dishes yourself. This has overwhelmed you and caused so much stress to the point where you can’t function. You were never created to fix anything or do it on your own, that’s Jesus’ job. Your spirit is restless, tired, and you’ve been knocked down to your knees because the enemy has come in and taken my place. I keep trying to light your heart on fire but the devil is sitting there blowing out the flame. You have allowed the enemy to isolate you and make you feel small, incompetent, unworthy, unloved, without purpose, forgotten. I am right here, lift up your teary face and lean into me, Olivia.”

You see, folks, I’m a mess. I’ve got lots of dishes in that sink that I thought were fine to leave for a little while. Nope, it’s not fine. It’s not fine to think that I am capable of handling this on my own, or that it will fix itself out on its own over time. No! You’ll suffer, crumble, feel the worst pain of your life and then be brought to your knees crying out to the Lord. At least for me, that’s what is happening currently. Cleaning the dishes does not mean cleaning them yourself; it is allowing God to come in and clean them for you. I am accepting that I am a MESS and it’s not my job to fix what only God can.

The thing I am learning right now is that God is bigger than every single one of my problems. Jesus has come before me and died for all the sins I will ever commit. Did you catch that? I am already forgiven… this means that the sins that I am going to commit in 5 years are already forgiven by Jesus. Jesus doesn’t forgive us of our sins after we commit them, no! He has died for all our past, present and future sins. This is why he can love us unconditionally. God loves us no matter what we do, he cannot love us less or anymore than he already does. His love is perfect. Just by admitting those words out loud, right now, “God is perfect love” makes my tight chest loosen up and breathe easier because I don't have to do anything to earn his love.

1 Peter 4:8 “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.”

God is cleaning all my dirty dishes, in fact, at this point he is cleaning out the whole kitchen.  he is renewing my body, mind and spirit with more of him. He is tearing down everything that is not of him and making me new. He is all that I need and I will lean into him through this process. 

I may be on my knees right now and currently under deep construction, but let me tell you that God is so faithful. He is proud of where I am at right now, but he isn’t going to leave me here in this pain. 

Psalm 52:7-10 says, “Purify me from my sins, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Oh, give me back my JOY again; you have broken me- now let me rejoice. Don’t keep looking at my sins. Remove the stain of my GUILT. Create in me a clean heart, O God. Renew a loyal spirit within me.” Joy is coming…