Housecleaning is special medicine

J.L.A. as told to Audrey Carli

Remember your early years of childraising? Weren't they glorious times? You hugged your newborns and cherished their arrival into your home. You nurtured and nourished them with physical, emotional and spiritual food.

What warmth rushed through your heart when your gaze met your infant's. "The baby smiled at me! The baby knows me already! The baby's eyes met mine!" You bonded and continued to relate in love as the years passed.

You had morning meals or chats while getting ready for each day. The school bus arrived, and you hugged and waved farewell. Sometimes the hugs became kisses blown from an outstretched palm as the clock urged, "Hurry!"

There were feelings of fulfillment during the passing years. "Mom, I love coming home to the smell of fresh bread!" "Mom, you cleaned with that pine stuff again! The house smells so good!"

Perhaps you never told your children that you purposely baked the bread in late afternoon so they could enjoy the aroma after school. Or that you saved the floor mopping until later so the fragrance would welcome them at the door.

There were other times, happy experiences they shared with you. There were also tears that you soothed away to encourage your young. "Life's not always easy," you said, "but we have the Lord. He is with us always."

When my teenage son suffered with heartache after a break-up with his girlfriend, I hugged and consoled him for hours. We sat on the sofa as his inner torment spilled into my ear. I kept on holding him. He kept on holding back. Nothing changed; the girlfriend and he were never reconciled. But he didn't endure the heartache alone.

Now, a few years later, I am busy cleaning closets, tidying the garage, scrubbing floors and washing walls as though my life depended on it. I work and pray for God's help to endure.

My son seemed to be so happy with his young wife. Then, after their baby was born, she announced that he must choose between her and his parents. "If he loves me, he'll choose me," she told me by phone. "If he doesn't, he'll never see his child if I can help it!"

Their child needs both parents. Perhaps time will ease the crisis. So we have volunteered to stay out of their lives. Then our son won't have to choose. She will have him, and their baby will have both parents.

We are praying and asking the Lord for guidance for all of us. I am also sharing so others will pray for us, too. Only God's love can permeate this situation.

In the meantime, I am cleaning every corner and shelf in the house. The spending of energy somehow works off the inner turmoil. If you are overwrought with a trying emotional dilemma in your family, put that heartache into constructive projects. If you don't have a house to clean, you probably have some other project waiting for the new energy created by the trauma.

Romans 8:28 sums it up: "We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose."

Audrey Carli is a freelance writer from Stambaugh, Mich.

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