Mrs. Clean Exposes the Mess

MY WIFE is the wife of Mr. Clean. She’s Mrs. Clean, all right.

She’s a cleaning fanatic. Some people get high on drugs. She gets high on detergent. Our kids will tell you, she doesn’t want to ever see any dishes ever left in the sink.

It’s a rare day if anything is left in our sink. Sometimes I will walk into our home, being the busy man that I am, and happen to lay something in a place that it ought not be in. Or sometimes, because I’m tired and busy, my tendency is to step over something that may be lying in a place it ought not be. My wife will say, “Excuse me, um, dear, didn’t you see that?”

Now the answer to that question is sometimes yes and sometimes no. Sometimes I see it, but I just don’t care, okay.

Sometimes I didn’t see it because my mind is somewhere else. Either way, what my wife has a penchant for doing because of her cleaning perfectionism is to expose me to the light. She speaks the word to bring my attention to the fact that there is something wrong that I have let go unaddressed and that I have walked in “darkness.” She lets me know that I’ve missed the boat, whether intentionally or unintentionally.

That means I have two options now. I can either change my actions and walk in the light that has been given to me, or I can continue to walk the way I’m walking. The Bible calls this “walking in darkness” because if I keep walking in the same direction when the light has exposed my wrongdoing, then I am no longer walking in the light.

I am now walking in darkness because I can see what the light has shown me and have chosen not to respond to it.