Long Story Short: We all have a least favorite chore that draws out the worst of us. What if the problem isn’t the responsibilities, but how we show up to them? Read below to hear the mindset shift that changed the way I came to my kitchen sink. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t the dirty dishes that changed, but my heart.
I gripe about washing dishes. My cozy home houses many things, but a dishwasher is not among them. Coming to the sink is a slow and necessary act that bookends my days. As I scrub and rinse throughout the day, I think about the “more important” things I could be doing or should be doing.
And before I even realize that I’m listening to lies and allowing annoyances to fester, it spills out of me. I complaining in my heart and allowing my frustration to reveal itself in words that are anything but grateful. Out of the overflow of my heart, my mouth lashes out.
Wash, rinse, repeat.
Are Dirty Dishes My Feeble Calling?
I know God, who set the stars in the sky and flung fish into the sea, has called me and truly all his creation to great things. Great things like discipling new believers, praying without ceasing, writing words that encourage another soul. He is a shrewd manager of our time and doesn’t waste our days.
And yet, when I spend mornings and evenings tidying the kitchen, I have a hard time believing this is the life for which He saved me.
Surely He didn’t intend for me to waste away at the kitchen sink when he gave me a desire to create? How am I supposed to be faithful to both this chore and the community in which I’m planted? How is washing dishes making an eternal impact? These dirty dishes lack the glamor of the greater places I believe He wants me to go.
I thought God needed me to do other things. Disciple, write, pray, cook, host, walk – Lord, call me to anything more fun than washing dishes. I thought You made me to live a life of productiv – I mean fullness.
Somewhere within me lies the belief that washing dishes is a waste of time.
My precious time.
When I dig down just deep enough into the soil, I see the root of my griping: believing too small of His plans for my time and succumbing to the idea that I know better how to spend my time than He does.
Your Heart Beats for Better Things
A thought crossed my mind as I came to the sink full of dishes yet again. The realization was so organic, it greeted me like a sprout appearing out of the soil. As soap suds gathered on plates and bowls filled with water, I realized that I could choose a different response. I didn’t have to be angry. I could come to the sink with a different posture.
It felt so simple – almost silly – to think about my heart in this way.
Could I really learn to not hate doing the dishes?
I did the only thing I know what to do when I get an idea that feels too big: I prayed about it. I started praying at the sink, asking for redemption of my unavoidable time spent here. As I stopped griping to others and starting talking to God instead, I realized my heart wasn’t made for all this bitterness. My heart is made for joy and trust in our Maker.
Doing the Dishes Became a Ministry of Prayer
What started as prayers asking God to ease the frustration pangs of housework turned into prayers for my home and community.
I started prayed for my home and the guests who enter. Daring to take God at His word, I asked Him to cultivate a loving legacy under our roof. I remembered our future family, starting with the baby in my womb – and Lord willing the more to come.
Here and there, as I showed up to my rhythm of caring for my family by washing the dishes, imperfect prayers marked the time. I pictured the dirtiness of my heart as I gently scrubbed pots and pans. Each bubble washed down the sink represented another piece of gunk loosening its hold on my heart.
One imperfect prayer after another was lifted – if you can even count prayers – until these dirty dishes became a sign of provision and blessing.
The Dishes Didn’t Change, But My Heart Did
Eventually I began to enjoy washing dishes because it became time spent for God. Or perhaps, more accurately, it was always time spent for God; I just finally began to believe that.
But y’all know the dishes didn’t stop coming. Actually, the more we invited friends over and preparing for baby to arrive, the more dishes piled up at the sink.
Selfishness loosened as my heart learned to see the full sink as an opportunity to pause and say thank you for money to fill our plates and pay the water bill. The feeling of eternity in my heart grew as I asked Him for a family to nurture in His timing and way. Pride slowly began to wash away as I admitted the fears and failing I carried with me every day.
The Joy I Looked For
I carried these words to the sink as I brought lip-stained glasses and crusty forks too. The sink, with all its soaps and suds, became a sacred place.
The parts of me that used to hate washing dishes began to believe that I could find joy here. Slowly, slowly every day. This mundane chore and the simplicity of prayer threaded into my daily rhythms. Even when I couldn’t see the answers to the prayers, I just stood there talking to Him in my heart and sometimes out loud. Without anything fancy or a perfected script, honest words came up and out.
It occurred to me eventually that the simple act of prayer had changed something in our kitchen. It didn’t rely on the answers He chose to give or withhold, but the change was in the loving act of talking to Him openly and honestly. The prayers that started with, “Lord, help me to not hate washing dishes. Help me to watch my tongue. Disarm my frustration,” shaped into something bigger.
I was stewarding the home and heart He had gifted me before I even realized that’s what I was doing. In an act of defiance to the lie that washing dishes is a waste of time, I chose to believe that this was a good and noble thing to do. God was growing me to see the glory in ordinary places as I showed up to do the dirty work, lifted people I knew and dream of knowing, and relinquished frustrations in our kitchen sink conversations.
My Heart Needed to Learn Washing Dishes Was an Act of Stewardship Over My Home and My Heart
I came to the sink a few weeks ago. I stood in the same spot I have for years. I’ve watched the trees in the yard blossom to green before turning golden and then bare a few times now.
This time, as the leaves turned golden, I washed dishes with a newborn babe wrapped to my body. I held him close and kissed his head; I realized that I prayed for him here a hundred times before I ever saw his face. This little man is the fruition of kitchen sink prayers.
I returned to the original question: am I called to a feeble life of washing dishes? I smiled at my answer, yes.
Standing at the kitchen sink was exactly where God had placed me all those times before, and even now, because it led me to carrying this baby. In the face of this sleeping child, I saw the eternal impact of my clumsy breath prayers and knew that I had been called to wash dishes all those times before for no purpose less than praying this baby into the world and growing into the gracious and God-reliant mama he needs me to be.
The dishes didn’t change, but my heart did. As the dishes piled up and I showed up to take care of them, this rhythm day in and day out, God took the prayers I offered and turned them into blessings and provision beyond my wildest imagination.
It tickles me to think about the ways I have yet to see the answer to some of those prayers. The life of this baby in my arms is only just beginning. How will he glorify God in his generation because of the honest things I asked of him while washing dishes?
God deals mercifully with me as I do His work at the kitchen sink, clumsily stewarding the home and heart He gave me. Resentment over the ministry of the ordinary places He’s called me to has no place in my home. The dirty dishes didn’t need to change to see this, just my heart.