I had an interesting conversation, recently, with a mother who was also picking up her children from after care. She said she was running late and feeling as though she wasn’t able to do what she wanted to do but was even failing at the things that were necessary. My response was to the point: “We all have limitations and we are all broken. However, we are also breakers. That’s why we need Jesus.”
Our dishwasher stopped draining a few weeks ago.
My '94 wrangler engine is shot as of 4 months ago.
I’m on my last pair of black jeans without holes in precarious places. Yes, yes…they aren’t holy like the rest of them. But without irony, the holy ones are going to be used for gardening on this day that I write.
Things break. We break. The limitations seem to either sit on the backburner till we can’t manage or they are all front burner issues at the same time whereas something needs to change.
That is where we are. I only listed a few broken things as to not seem too dramatic, but I am sure you can relate.
We all know what it feels like to encounter brokenness.
Some of us know what it feels like when everything is breaking.
If you don’t know what either of these are, you will soon, otherwise you just simply aren’t paying attention and have enough money to throw your “problems” away.
I am in charge of the dishes. My wife, Stephanie, is in charge of the laundry.I think it’s a good deal but we both struggle in certain seasons. The baskets are full of unfolded, clean clothes. The sink is backed up and the drying rack is full. Ah, but the dishwasher drain pump is not working.
So the conversation goes like this:
“Everything works but the drain, so I can just run the clean cycle with a sanitize rinse, and then manually drain it out with a cup. Ta-da!”
“But now the standing water smells like a sewer”, she says with truth stinking up the kitchen.
She’s right. And so the conversation has gone round the last couple of weeks. But now it feels like the backburner has 86’d this one to the front. We have to deal with the broken dishwasher and the fact we can’t replace it.
Well…we can. We would just have to go into debt to the sound of $750+. Dishwashers cost 500-1000. We are middle of the roaders when it comes to appliances. Never the cheapest, never the most expensive. But we have also adopted a new principle: we spend what we have not what we don’t. This is where it goes deep. We have ONE great debt: our mortgage. We have decided that this is the ONLY debt we want to carry in our lives.
Credit cards are in the monthly payoff category.
However, we just got hit with a big tax bill because Stephanie picked up a lot more money last year.
We are literally paycheck to paycheck. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way at this point.
But why?
Because Stephanie posed the simple thought:
“What if every night, after Ford (our 2 year old) goes to bed, all of us do the dishes together by hand? The girls would enjoy it (as they were literally cleaning our lunch dishes in the sink while she was saying this) and they would learn an important chore. We don’t need the dishwasher. Plus, what’s more? 15 minutes a night or $750 in debt”
I hesitated. The ramifications of a 6 and 4 year old helping me, the dishwashing expert, do the dishes. It sounds more annoying and messy than beneficial. Maybe going into debt for a few months was a better deal.
But I went back to our rule: ONE debt.
And then found clarity: the family working together.
I’m not sure that my discovery was in good order. I probably should have been excited about the prospect of us all doing dishes together. But…I wasn’t. It sounded irrational. It felt uncomfortable. And truthfully, it will likely be annoying. But grounding myself to an important rule that we put in place for good reason allowed me to make way for beauty to be a part of the difficult task ahead. An image that challenges my way.
A vision that compels me to change.
A hope that our family could work together, be together, learn together, and accomplish something together.
Isn’t that worth more than being indebted to the world?
by Jason Michael Chapel
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