Ahhh….grace…..
Monday is the day I put fresh sheets on our bed. I have found that if I assign tasks to certain days they stand a better chance of getting done. Friday is water the plants day, the first of the month is clean the coffee pot and makeup brushes day.
I wish I had the band width to assign other tasks to specific days but so far this is all I can handle. The rest is just a surprise attack or guilt driven effort when things have gotten out of hand.
But there is a point to all of this beyond being organized in home care.
When we bought our new bed a while back, they gave us “store credit” that seemed like a hefty sum that we could use on a mattress pad and new sheets. I had no idea how much sheets could cost outside of Kohl’s so it was sticker shock for sure.
Wanting to stretch our windfall money, we shopped the sale table and ended up getting the nicest set of sheets we have ever owned for almost the full amount of our credit. We had to chip in a small sum, but these are five star quality and worth it.
Except when I go to put them on the bed ever other week.
Yes, we have a second set from Kohl’s to allow for laundering cycles to be completed later in the week. Not Mondays usually, because goodness knows changing them took all my energy.
Both sets are tight to get the fitted bottom sheet on, but the pricier ones take it to a whole new level. The maker of this bedding took “fitted” seriously. There is zero room for error when putting the bottom sheet on our mattress.
I have learned that if I get the first gathered pocket exactly square to the last stitch around the corner….and then the next….and then the next…there seems to be adequate fabric give for the last corner.
Any kind of slack in making the stitched end fit precisely on the thick mattress for the first three corner means the whole effort is doomed.
As I mulled this over a couple of weeks ago and then this week as our upper level sheets got their turn to be out of the closet, I had several thoughts about how that could be applied to our lives.
But today it hit me in a fresh way as I worked diligently from corner to corner to ease the fabric into just the right spot so that the sheet fit the bed and I didn’t have to break a wrist trying to force it to comply.
Sometimes…often…I think that’s how faith and prayer and this walk with Jesus works. I harken back to how I perceived God as a child and perhaps it was error in teaching or my faulty learning, but it seemed like it was important to get it just right or the whole thing was a bust.
Thankfully through more teaching over the years and for all the times I have failed to get the corners adjusted just right to meet the mattress and discovered God’s grace meeting me every time, I see things more clearly.
God is not standing over us expecting us to pull that fitted sheet into position or face a fourth corner that refuses to be completed properly. He is not a fitted sheet but that lovely flat one that we can just spread out and tuck in at the bottom.
Our church is doing a 21 Day Fast and Prayer together. Today we start the second week and the daily prayer prompt came with an introduction reminding us that we may have slipped up on something in our first week.
Maybe we forgot and consumed something we had given up.
Maybe we fasted but instead of praying or drawing closer to God, we found something to take the place of the thing we were trying go deny ourselves with.
Maybe we got grumpy when we couldn’t have the thing we gave up and we resented it a little bit.
Maybe our prayers aren’t perfect and our attitudes get skewed and we fight the same demon we fought yesterday and the day before.
But there is grace.
Fall hard on that grace when you stumble.
Think about how none of this has to be done perfectly or the whole gig is off.
Picture God’s grace tossed over you like that flat sheet on your bed.
Picture yourself tucked in nice and safe in His loving cover of mercy and grace.
And then extend it to others.
Blessings friends.
You are dearly loved <3