This beautiful dishcloth was crocheted by my mother in law. I love it. It is hard to express all the things it makes me feel and think, especially since it is such a least thought about item in our homes. I want to say for such a simple item and tool that we use, it feels lavish and warm and comforting, like the days I would hold my great grandmother’s warm soft wrinkly hands. [That would be a whole other topic about being a child and craving those soft dish worn hands to touch my childish face. And how I am in shock that so many women are more concerned with the youthful appearance of their hands than the tenderness and wisdom that their hands can bring to comfort a child. another day].
A beautiful dishcloth can go unnoticed among a sink and counter full of dishes. Even worst, a beautiful dishcloth can be kept up for safe keeping away from the stale food that sits on those plates from the previous nights dinner. A beautiful set of dishcloths that were made with tenderness and love can be hidden away and forgotten about by a clutter hound. A beautiful dishcloth like this can shine like a ruby at the top of a crown when it is left on a cleaned counter, next to a polished sink.
You see, I love yarned dishcloths, but I found them greatly impractical because I never wanted them to be dirty after all that time was spent on making them. Well, I have finished about 3 weeks of Fly Lady training. I am far from mastering a routine and a beautiful kept house! But I have the most beautiful sink and never knew it. My sink is a double white cast iron sink that was filled with stains from onion peels and such. Well, working slowly to create a routine, I have managed to keep a base point of my kitchen sink cleaned and pretty much the surrounding counter top. Well, my mother in law blessed me with this beautiful dishcloth and for once, I was excited to have it at my sink like a badge of honor.
Then the dishcloth started to linger in my heart. Have you ever read The five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman? Well this book was given to me a couple months after our honey moon ended. As a side note, two head strong personalities can quite literally end the honeymoon period of their marriage on the way home from the honeymoon AND we did.
So back to the 5 love languages. My husband’s love language is acts of service, mine quality time. Well, in the beginning of our courtship or something like that. In retrospect I would like to think of it as courtship, in reality it was not. Alright, I was a little too well know for my huge DISLIKE of dishes. When I lived alone in college, I would let them pile for days and then scornfully do them, when the last dish was gone. I just know grasped the concept that I do not have to have the dishwasher bulging and it has a button that allows it to run more than once a day, hmm! So one day I come home and I get a strange feeling something was wrong/different. Not a comforting notion when you live alone. SO I look around and realize after walking from room to room, there WAS something missing, MY DISHES! They were gone and the sink was clean?!
Wow! It was like the tooth fairy had shown up with the money truck. My darling husband had stopped by to find that I was not home and decided to let himself in (I believe at this time we were not dating but just friends and he was there to gain access to my fridge.) Well with the lack of anything to do, he did my dishes. Wow! Should have know then that he was the one I was going to marry, NO MORE DISHES! Well, I married him anyways and during the first few year he did the dishes often.
{{5 Love languages comes in here}} Well during a typical heated argument for my need for love, still didn’t get the whole love thing, I was a new Christian and well, new to marriage.
I demanded that I wanted time with him because that is what people who were in love do.
Well, he argued that he did love me, because look he did the dishes. ((enter weird scooby doo sound)).
My ignorant response was, why do I care about that, I can hire someone for that, but I can not hire someone to LOVE ME!
Yes folks, I was that naive. So we read the book, the light bulb turns on and my mouth makes the sound “OOooooooooo. Wow? Really???” Who would have thought that one?
So this next month will be my 8th wedding anniversary to my wonderful strong headed husband. In the last 8 years, I have learned a lot about him, but mostly me. In fact, there are days that I realize he could have chained into an entirely different person and it really does not matter. Now I choose to love him. And honestly, since I am being too honest, I sometime love him, while I am on the phone telling him about why I find it ridiculous that I have to love him in “that way” (insert whatever task I am doing at the moment) and can’t he just put his socks in the basket, instead of me stumbling onto his secret stash of dirty socks.
In the past 3 weeks as I am taking the beginning steps to become a better person, no not really, just a better help mate to my husband, a better mother, and the tick-tock of our home’s rhythm, I am embracing my role at the sink. I know I am working on a deep change that is unlacing every bit of my internal fiber, to be woven new by only God’s hands and I am letting him. I will be an orderly person, I will keep my home kept, and I will not live among clutter. The eternal chant that reminds me of God’s truth, is that He is not a God of chaos. (I am an engineer, so please realize that even spell check does not work for me, when I use caios, I really mean chaos, I spell it like it sounds not by the American language change of rules policy)
oh, back to my thought, so I am using flylady to become a person of order and it is going to take everything I got to surrender to God’s will for this to happen. But that little dishcloth and the comfort of my great grandmother’s hands reminds me that I have an ultimate love given to me and I can simply keep my home kept, to give that love to others. To celebrate this and surround myself with this knowledge of surrender to love my husband as he needs to be loved, I plan to have about 8-10 dishcloths made by my anniversary so I have one daily (with a few backups) to keep me in constant acknowledgement.
So I made my first 2 here
And I am working on my next one here:
Then just last night I was reminded by God’s Power and how he gives to us through the love of other people that He surrounds us with. Because last night, I was given these 2 dishcloths out of the blue. WOW! I was so excited! She had no idea how such a simple and often overlooked tool in the kitchen that she took the time and love to make, could mean so much to me.
What I love about them the most is that each one is different. Some are crocheted and some are knitted. They have different stitches and different yarn. They are different sizes. Together, they remind me that each season of marriage is different and will feel and look different from the others. Enjoy the beauty of the good seasons and the survival of the hard seasons and no matter what, this too shall pass, like it or not. And most of all, I CHOOSE to love, I do not feel love. Love is not a feeling or emotion, it is a job. Which means, I will not ever worry about falling out of it, I either choose to love or I don’t. Now falling in and out of lust, is a given. I just hope the Good Lord doesn’t mess with that until we can both no longer………
Well, good night you all! :)
~trish
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