Brushing Teeth: Maintenance
Do you ever hear your dad’s voice in your head spouting wisdom? Every time I go around a certain curve on the freeway, I hear my dad say, “Always gas through the curves”. Another gem comes to mind every time I work on our budget: “Never spend more than you make.” My dad is a veritable Aesop, and his tidbits of truth have held solid in all the decades that I’ve been hearing them and doing my best to follow them.
So when I read the opening line of Chapter 3, I immediately wrote “My dad’s philosophy” in the margin next to it, as I could almost hear my dad saying it: “So much of life , unavoidably, is just maintenance” (37) My dad takes care of the things he purchases, be it his house, vehicle, motorcycle, truck camper, lawn mower, coffee pot, and everything else he buys. He follows this philosophy in taking good care of himself as well; my 77 year old father rode 7 miles on his bike in the heat advisory of “Feels like 103 degree temperatures” a day this week so as to avoid living a sedentary life and spent this past Saturday celebrating his birthday with a gift from a friend to drive a Lamborghini at the Michigan International Speedway.
I found myself chuckling out loud throughout this chapter as Warren explained her thoughts about brushing her teeth and connecting them to the spiritual angle. “We spend most of our days and much of our energy simply staving off inevitable entropy and decay” (37). I remember the first time that I made a personal connection with that word entropy: a gradual decline into disorder. It crept into my life when my husband and I started having children, and the more children we had, the more I understood this principle that’s usually referred to when discussing thermodynamics. It went from inching into my life in small ways to becoming the dominating force and momentum I was struggling against all the time. My best friend’s dad used to say, “Trying to clean your house when you have children is like trying to brush your teeth while you’re eating Oreos.” (His pearls of wisdom were usually more humorous but no less true than my own dad’s.) I certainly understood that analogy in an everyday sort of way, especially when our four kids ranged from age 8 to age 2.
Perhaps you find yourself at a time in your life where you find yourself weary and worn out by the maintenance of keeping up your house and yard while keeping your children clothed and fed and in clean diapers.
I saw a sign the other day that made me remember those days vividly:
Perhaps you’re also trying to throw working part-time or full-time into that equation. Maybe you too are feeling swirled around in that swirl of entropy pulling you into chaos. Even though this chapter wasn’t written intending to direct a reader’s thoughts to this particular thinking, it’s where my thoughts went and perhaps what some readers need to work through and process today as well.
In the midst of our crazy, messy, sleep-deprived days of early parenthood - or at any stage of our lives - God can restore the order within us. Isaiah 26:3-4 “You will keep in perfect peace those whose minds are steadfast, because they trust in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord himself, is the Rock eternal.” Even when the laundry piles look endless or we can’t keep up with the dishes stacking up on the counter, when toys are everywhere on the floor and the groceries are depleted, we can take a deep breath and know that it is well within our souls. How can we do that when life just constantly feels like a run-on sentence? We cling tightly to God’s promises to be with us always, even in the thick of it, and we celebrate His abundant goodness in the toothless grin of our infant or the contagious giggle of our three year old. We celebrate the life that proliferates all around us, regardless of all the maintenance we feel we’ll never catch up with, and we choose joy. We choose value in the precious temporary task of raising young children and make our focus instilling the habit of a thankful heart within us. The maintenance and upkeep can skate along at the bare minimum for awhile, and your world’s inevitable slide into disorder will even out so you perhaps can find a “new normal” in your standards for housekeeping. Through it all, God will be there with you in those trenches of more neediness than time and energy sometimes seem to provide.
