Clean Freak

After my mother was widowed a second time (three times total, but who's counting?), I was old enough to want to help her. After all, Mom was having to shoulder the load of sole provider; it only seemed fitting that I should help lighten the burden if I could. Maybe I was only eleven, but surely a child could do something. How about—clean?

My mom had already instilled in me some basic cleaning principles: leave a bathroom sink in as pristine a condition as before you used it, always wash the bathtub after use, always drop dirty clothes in the hamper, and so on. You get the drift. If I was already so prepped for cleaning, why not take it all on? How hard could it be? Humph! Little did I know what I was getting into.

After a little hesitation on her part, Mom finally came around to my way of thinking and let me take on the responsibility of keeping the house clean. However, I soon ran into a teensy-weensy fly in the ointment. While my mother seemed appreciative of my labors, it never failed that if Mom didn't have to work on one of my cleaning days, she would graciously "help" me. Alright! I thought that first time. My work just got easier! Not.

While an extra pair of hands did indeed expedite the work, there was one aspect of Mom's cleaning I came to dread. Invariably she would find a new place to clean—the top of the door frame, this corner, that corner ... new places ad nauseum! It didn't take me long to not like having Mom help me. The new place she found to clean would be added to my list of things I needed to maintain on my own. Every time I cleaned. For perpetuity. And one thing about Mom—she wasn't shy about voicing her opinion. She would let me know in no uncertain terms if I failed to follow through.

Nope. I much preferred cleaning on my own!

Did I like being reminded again and again to clean? Did I like my work being reviewed and being reprimanded if I fell short? Absolutely not. But over the course of time, a strange thing happened. My cleaning skills became second nature, done with almost no thought or effort—kind of like the discipline of brushing one's teeth. My mom's discipline not only kept me on my toes, it ended up whipping me into a clean freak. Maybe not to the level of clinical OCD, but to a healthy level that took the onerous weight out of cleaning.

With age came appreciation for this discipline. The aggravation of having to wipe down a sink after I used it so the next person to enter would find it gleaming gradually morphed into something else. I found myself grateful for the compulsory discipline of perpetual cleaning. Why? Because now, my friends, I lay back and live the life of Riley, a life of relative ease.

Aside from the deep cleaning that must be performed periodically, my day to day cleaning is a lazy man's dream. Because I immediately clean after myself, regular cleaning is easy-peasy. The discipline I despised has endued me with a life of almost effortless cleanliness. Who'd a thunk?

No wonder Paul wrote, "Now no chastening' (according to Greek lexicons, the word discipline can be used here) "for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby" (Hebrews 12:11).

Spiritual discipline is not something we wake up to in the morning and say, "Oh, I can hardly wait till God pulls my ear again!" And yet, just as the discipline of cleaning immediately after oneself led to an easier life in regard to cleaning as an adult, the disciplines required of those who love the Lord Jesus yield even greater fruit.

Such disciplines as reading God's Word daily, praying daily, surmounting the obstacles that aim to keep our prone-to-laziness body from going to church, little by little develop the character of Jesus in us. They seem hard at first—until we start reaping the fruit.

It took years of gritting my teeth to clean before reaching the level of being grateful for ingrained habits that make daily life easier. Reading your Bible one day won't turn you into a super-saint the next—but it will be a start!

While it might be a pain to find time for Bible reading and prayer, and it might be a pain to overcome the kids' squabbling and give up some of your only free day to go to church, do it anyway. And little by little, day by day, those spiritual muscles will get stronger and stronger until the time will come when—tah-dah!—you will reap the awesome reward. Without conscious effort on your part, you will find your life redolent with fruits of knowledge, temperance, patience, godliness, brotherly kindness, and love (2 Peter 1:5-7).

So embrace the pain. Embrace the discipline. Squeegee your soul. You'll be glad you did.

P.S. Thanks, Mom.

"For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power and of love, and of a sound mind" (2 Timothy 1:7) [the Greek word used for "sound mind" here is "sophronimos," a word that means "discipline, i.e., self-control"—(Strong's Concordance)].

"Know ye not that they which run a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain. And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I , not as one that beateth the air: but I keep under my body and bring it unto subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself l should be a castaway" (1 Corinthians 9:24-27).