I ran the mop over the sticky spot on the floor beneath the dining room table again. And again. The trouble with old houses is that those original hardwood floors everyone loves are terribly hard to keep clean. You can’t use modern cleaning solutions on them without compromising the wood. So you end up on all fours underneath the table at 8:30 on a Tuesday night, scratching at a fossilized Brussel sprout leaf with your fingernail.
“The floors,” I thought, “are never done. They’re just never done. I will be here doing the same thing tomorrow night. And the night after that.” Sometimes that thought is frustrating. But this isn’t a post about the menial, joyless aspects of housework that will never be finished. I will be washing dishes until the day I die. I’ve come to terms with that reality (mostly). No, the night I was scraping hardened food from under my young son’s chair, I was thinking about the positive lessons of daily, repetitive work. If I skip cleaning the floors for even a week, the buildup of crumbs, spilled juice, and dust would coalesce into a sticky layer of filth with an accompanying miasma that would kill your appetite. Our table is where all the meals are eaten, all the family devotions are experienced, most of the conversations happen, and all my writing is done. It’s where my Bible study group meets once a week and where I sip coffee with the friend who dropped by. The dining room is a high traffic area. We live our life around our table, and it shows. So, every night after I clean up the kitchen and wash the dishes after dinner, I tackle the kitchen and dining room floors to right the disorder of our busy day. We will go to bed with a clean slate. We’ll wake up to a clean table and floors free from the detritus of yesterday’s living. There’s a reset every night.
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I wake up early, before the rest of my family, because it is the quietest part of the day. Absent of the eventual noise of email, social media, or the demands of my to-do list, the dark mornings are a reset of a different kind. I pour a cup of coffee and flick on a lamp or two. Nothing too much to break the softness of the predawn darkness. I sit. I listen to the quiet. Let the cottony void fill my ears. And pray. Or try to. It’s hard to get going as the thoughts that stilled while I slept slowly begin their swirl. Usually, this is the point where all the failings of the previous day come swarming to the forefront of my mind. I see myself in yesterday as a character in a book or a movie. I don’t like how she spoke to her son or snapped at her husband. I cringe when I remember that envious thought she had about a friend, when I sift through her day and the ways she frittered away her time and thoughts on silly, meaningless things. I felt the sting of her disloyalty when she worshiped the timeline scroll, the Netflix binge, the chips in the pantry. I want to yell at her: “This is not who you are!” She gives her worship so freely. I give it so freely.
And it’s here in the dark of the early morning where confession begins. And a lot of praying for help in walking in repentance. David Murray says that “repentance isn’t just saying sorry; it’s being sorry.”[1] And I feel that being sorry down in the cracks of my soul when I speak to the Lord of all the ways I have failed to love and obey Him with my heart, soul, mind, strength. “This heart,” I think most days, “is never done. It’s just never done.” I will open my Bible and mine the words for understanding. The Bible is a high-beam flashlight, casting a glare on my sin. Again, there’s confession and a being sorry that breaks me a little. Sometimes a lot. As it should. But that’s not all. Because where God’s Word wounds it also binds up with healing and hope that I so desperately need. I am sinful, but I have been saved. I am being saved. I will be saved. This sanctification is done but is also being done. Every day the Lord is doing His work, showing me where I’ve sinned, teaching me how to obey, equipping me to say yes to Him and no to sin. He won’t stop this present progressive work because He has made me righteous through faith in Christ and He will finish this work. One day, one day, one day—there will be no more dark mornings of regrets and repentance for there will be nothing to regret or repent of. The Lord’s work in me will be done and I will be with Him forever. Unable to sin. This heart will be done one day.
But until then, the daily reset is vital to my spiritual growth and health and my relationship with the Lord who has made me know and is making me new and will make me new. The quiet mornings of prayer and confession, the daily tethering myself to Scripture, the ritual of remembering of the gospel is necessary for this tools are are what God is pleased to use shape me as He desires.
Last night I sat down on the couch with a cup of hot tea and sighed deeply. To my husband I said, “It’s so nice when I get to this time of night and all the work is done.” I’d closed down the kitchen, mopped the dining room floor, set the timer for the morning coffee, changed into my pajamas. I know in that moment of temporary satisfaction that in roughly twenty-four hours, I’ll go through the same reset doing the same repetitive work. The floors are never done. But one day they will be.
One day, one day, one day—there will be no more dark mornings of regrets and repentance for there will be nothing to regret or repent of. Share on X
Photo by KWON JUNHO on Unsplash
[1] David Murray, Luke: Stories of Mission and Mercy (Wheaton, IL: Crossway), 48.
Glenna Marshall is married to her pastor, William, and lives in rural Southeast Missouri where she tries and fails to keep up with her two energetic sons. She is the author of The Promise is His Presence (P&R) and Everyday Faithfulness (Crossway), and Memorizing Scripture (Moody). Connect with her on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.