Window Washing Season
I see people all over town getting their windows washed, or like me, washing windows myself.
I live in a dry, dusty town in West Texas. Rain makes mud. Dirt accumulates horizontally and vertically. Kona rubs his nose along the glass.
Reflection shows Kona and me in door and windows replaced this past year.
My daughter brought over her steam cleaning machine and showed me how to use it for washing windows. The size of a canister vacuum, this device is both amazing and dangerous. The machine’s stainless steel body of gets hot enough to burn skin, which reminded me of a serious burn above my ankle I got by touching the tailpipe of my uncle’s motorcycle as I disembarked. OUCH.
Cleaning windows makes me think of my mom. On a rare visit to see me and my family, my mother cleaned my windows––a whole bank of windows between the covered porch and kitchen table where my family gathered morning and evening for meals, homework, and family chats.
I wondered then if Mom had noted the stupefied look on my face and whether my eyes widened, registering the shock I felt seeing her tackle this dirty job. She worked for a couple of hours to make those windows spotless.
She came. She cleaned. She conquered, inside and out.
When the spirit moved my mother to make improvements, some mysterious meditative process had begun.
Reflections: Seeing Clearly Enough to Forgive and Be Forgiven
“Throughout the course of life there is a long line of fathers and sons, parents and children, servants and masters, forgiven and forgivers, and at different time we are called on to take up one role and then the other. When we do it right, we are bearing Christ’s example in mind.”
Most of my effort to sort through the emotional baggage I carried into adulthood focused on what someone had done to me, or not done for me. I cast myself in the role of forgiver.
It has taken years and countless replays to gain a sense of proportion. With a shift in perspective, I began to see myself in need of forgiveness from the very people I believed God expected me to forgive.
Join the Chorus of Forgivers
Pivotal moments accumulate. One such moment occurred years earlier and took place in a different kitchen. My mother had come for a visit then too. She arrived on a Sunday and she needed a drink. But in our town, no alcohol was sold on Sunday.
She fell into a lament, sinking deeper into her past, recalling the people she needed to forgive while feeling also her own need of their forgiveness. It was almost crushing to watch her suffer both physically and emotionally. How those memories tormented her.
Only I was an adult now. I didn’t have to endure this scene. Not again.
While the light from the backdoor spilled across the kitchen floor, a greater light broke through to my heart––as dramatic for me as when Saul met Jesus on the road to Damascus and afterward became the apostle Paul.
This was my moment to forgive my mother for everything.
“My chains fell off. My heart was free. I rose went forth and followed Thee.”
Forgiving my mother changed me without anything about my mother needing to change.
I learned that day forgiveness is like a charge building invisibly in the atmosphere until conditions cause lightning to strike––a living current can course through hearts in a flash.
Whatever changes occurred in my mother’s life came later and in different circumstances. God engineers the circumstances that lead people to forgive themselves for hurting people they love.
Windows work both ways.
See out. See in. Windows need washing again and again.
“This is my Father’s World,” and I play a tiny role in His story. Throughout my journey, God has called on me at different times to be the person forgiven of my trespasses and also numerous opportunities to join the chorus of forgivers. Both roles bear testimony to His grace.
Because of Jesus Christ, God does not hold my sins against me. Therefore, as a Christian, I make it my ambition to forgive others their debts––to forgive AS as I am forgiven––measure for measure.
When the windows to my soul are clean, I can see my own need to be forgiven. Again and again.
