The White String

I used to have a cleaning day.
It was easy in our one bedroom apartment.
I could clean the whole apartment in an hour.
I knew it would be different when we bought our first house.

It was a four bedroom house, but there was only the two of us at the time.
Two quickly became three.
Three quickly became four.
I was able to clean the whole house in a few hours when my girls were napping.

We built a house after our first house.
We had three more children in that house.
That house had five bedrooms and two and a half bathrooms.
I had an upstairs cleaning day and a downstairs cleaning day.

Every day was laundry day.
Every day was clean the kitchen day.
It was not possible to clean the entire house at once.
I had no desire to even try; there were more important things to do.

We moved again, after our fifth child was born.
We moved to the house in which we still live.
This house has four large bedrooms, three bathrooms, and two powder rooms.
I do not have any cleaning day at all.

I know when I have to dust.
I know when I have to vacuum.
Every day is clean the kitchen day.
I still do quite a bit of laundry.

Life is busy.
Five children grew up in this house.
We had school activities and sports.
The rule was: one activity for each child but with five children, we were still busy.

I thought about all of that when I watched my granddaughter.
I told my husband that I wanted to vacuum the family room before she came over.
Why? He asked me.
Everything looks great.

It’s not for how it looks, I told him.
It is because she is crawling now, I added.
I could tell he was not following my train of thought.
She is going to find every little thing on the rug and I don’t want her to put it in her mouth.

He laughed.
I knew my granddaughter was coming over at 9:00 in the morning.
My daughter had errands to run.
I was going to have some Grandma time.

I wanted to take my three mile walk before she came.
I wanted to empty the dishwasher.
I wanted to get some of her favorite toys out of the toy chest.
I wanted to get a shower.

Somehow, I finished everything.
I still had not vacuumed the rug.
I looked at the clock and had exactly five minutes to spare.
I got the vacuum out of the closet in the foyer.

I vacuumed the family room.
I vacuumed the kitchen.
I vacuumed the laundry room.
I wanted to vacuum all the places I knew my granddaughter would crawl.

As soon as I wrapped the cord around the back of the vacuum, my daughter came.
She was carrying my precious granddaughter.
She was at Grandma’s house and she knew it.
She wanted me to ring the triangle dinner bell that she loves so much.

We began to play on the floor together as my daughter left to do her errands.
When I went into the kitchen, my granddaughter soon followed.
She found the gold circle knobs on the cabinets and drawers quite intriguing.
She crawled all around the island and came back to where she started.

She crawled into the family room and stopped next to the Hoosier cabinet.
I saw her look towards the rug.
I saw her picking at something with her finger.
It was a white string on the blue carpet that stuck out to her like a neon sign.

A white string was not going to hurt her.
I could not believe that she found the one string that remained.
The whole rug had vacuum marks going this way and that.
The whole rug was clean, except for one white string.

Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye. “Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces. (Matthew 7:1-6)

How often we are just like my granddaughter.
We find the one thing that is a problem and focus on that.
We find the one fault that seems to stand out among a person’s good qualities.
We find the one thing we feel the need to criticize instead of the plethora of things to praise.

The one white string on a freshly carpeted rug.
The speck in someone’s eye.
We find it all the time.
All the while, we fail to see the large plank that is sticking out of our own eye.

Jesus had a name for a person who does such a thing.
Hypocrite.
Ouch!
That’s a bit harsh.

Not to Jesus.
We have large planks that He can see.
The problem is that we don’t see them.
We only see the faults of others; we only see the white string.

I am glad that my granddaughter found the white string on the rug.
It was an object lesson for me.
How many times do I only see the string?
How many times do I fail to look at the plank that I have in my own eye?

I lifted my granddaughter up to carry her upstairs.
It was time for her nap.
I looked at the knees of her little pants.
And I thought my kitchen floors were clean!