Pink Glittered Lint

Reason #437

why I love the darling little girl I get to call DAUGHTER

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Glitter in the pink lint after doing a load of her laundry.

I once heard a prominent Christian women's speaker suggest using daily chores as a reminder to pray for certain people or situations in our households. Like praying for the owner of the clothing you are washing, drying or folding. I love this kind of advice - practical and applicable. I am a logical deduction kind of gal and I appreciate such direct advice. Still, parables are important too, sometimes, to understand the context of Divine ideas. So I thought about that lint. How it could easily represent the sin that we all have in our lives. It must be trapped and removed in order to make our apparel the best we can put on. How it hinders the laundering process if not removed. But looking at the lint, it is also indicative of the owner of the laundry it comes from. My husband's lint is almost always a light or reddish color. He works outside and wears light-colored clothing in order to tolerate the heat. The red comes from the Oklahoma dirt. My son's lint is almost always full of small scraps of paper that I somehow missed cleaning out of one of his pockets. He is a list maker deluxe, much like his Momma. Mine is always colorful. I love a different feel to my outfit each day. Fashion is fun for me. And my daughter's lint - it almost always contains pink and glitter.

So even our struggles and particular temptations make us unique. I don't love my daughter because she has lint (or sin), but I don't NOT love her for it either. Yes, I have to stop and pick the lint out of the filter each time I do the wash. It is an extra step and a little bit more work. But I have been given this awesome privilege to be the one to teach her to eliminate more lint from her life. But if I didn't get to be the one to do it, if life were "easier" and the lint removal was left to another, I would also miss the unique personality, the glitter and sparkle, that's peeks through the dust of the lint.

I guess the glitter would be love, since God is Love, and He is the Light - the sparkle. So I thought about my lint, that sin that God removes as He passes me through the wash of the blood of Jesus. It reminded me how much He loves me. That like I do with my daughter, He must pick the lint out of my life, but stop to smile at the glitter. He clothes me in it, just as hubby and I clothe our daughter in her glittery garb. So I guess my prayer would be that I would continually choose the sparkly bright outfit that glitters of LOVE, so that there is always sparkle in my lint. My lesson from the laundry today reminds me to love my family as they are. Help them, pray for them, and give thanks for the note-filled, red-dirt-stained, and pink glittered lint.