Saturday was a long day. I was up at 6:45am to get ready to leave for Camp La Vida workday and I went to bed around 2:30am (technically on Sunday, I suppose) after driving to Ridgecrest to volunteer for WMU NC’s 125th Birthday Party. At camp workday, I helped create an inventory for the 2011 Camp Store products and washed nine doors and door frames and the frames of two concession stands and one window. At the birthday party, I drove a tram to transport women and men up the mountain to the party and further up the mountain to their rooms. By the time I had finished volunteering and catching up with friends from home and beyond, I was exhausted…but about as happy as I could be.
I must admit that I didn’t have a very good attitude for the entirety of the day. While I outwardly stayed positive and did the work set before me, I inwardly begrudged the task of doing work that would easily be undone. The camp store currently looks great and the inventory is complete. But campers and parents will mess up the shelves and my organizational spreadsheet will likely not be the final one used. The doors and frames that I scrubbed look awesome now. But mold and mildew will return as the seasons change and likely few people will ever know of the hours that were spent cleaning on one, beautiful spring Saturday.
That’s how it is with cleaning, I suppose. It’s a never-ending process of picking up and organizing, scrubbing and wiping clean, vacuuming and rinsing, pruning and throwing away—completing tasks over and over again without obvious evidence that they have ever before been done. Quite honestly, it feels pointless sometimes—doing tasks that are easily undone. Why not spend the time doing more important things—like driving a tram in a thunderstorm in the middle of a warm spring evening?
As I reflected on my Saturday and confessed my poor attitude, though, I was reminded of something: Life is about the process. The journey. Not the outcome. And certainly not about making a lasting impression. After all, as the writer of Ecclesiastes writes, everything is meaningless—everything fades—this life is not permanent but only a brief moment of time in eternity—and driving women through a thunderstorm during a tornado watch isn’t going to be remembered anymore than scraping clean doors and entering data into my computer.
But the moments that I spent laughing with my colleagues and marveling at just how much better a cleaned door frame looks were fun. And the moments that I spent praying as I scrubbed—thanking God for being a God of beauty and creation and redemption and love—were cathartic. The desire that I had to finish my task pushed me to keep working even when I could have quit. And the dirt and sweat and grit that covered me and stayed on me for many, many hours made me so extremely thankful for the ability to shower and put on clean clothes. Life is about the process, Deanna. The journey. Not the outcome. And certainly not about making a lasting impression.
I took my dirty self to Ridgecrest as soon as I finished the doors and I drove that tram in the rain, letting the water and air and wind pour over me as God’s spirit humbled and renewed me. I laughed and I cried and I hugged and I ate. And I went to bed with the certainty that my work for the day would soon be undone and that the memory of my life would not last forever…yet…
Saturday will last for as long as I can remember and I will make sure to celebrate it with the excitement of both clean door frames and 125 years.
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