delighful domestic news

as i believe i mentioned earlier...we did something utterly thrilling to entertain us during the time we were snowed in the house two weeks ago. among many other great activities we ordered a new "Shark" vacuum cleaner from Amazon. it arrived in two days on our door step and sat tucked into its box until today with a week of aching to be used. i finally put it together and used that new machine to work wonders on our wood flooring and, especially, oatmealy colored carpets. the dirt canister was packed full of masses of my curly locks, dust, dirtiness, and pine needles straight from our Christmas tree (i am not doubting there are needles from last year's tree either!). 


that sucker worked great! 


i was pleased that it ate up so much junk that was lurking in our carpets and got some of the little bits out of the corners of the wood floors.


the cord was disappointingly shorter than our last vacuum's cord so i had to unplug it three separate times to vacuum upstairs and our entry way. grrr.


but the bestest part about our little Sharkie is that it is quieter than our previous vacuum. it is not an incredibly quiet noise, but infinitely calmer than the high-pitched eeeeeeeee! scream of our old Dirt Devil. i was the only one in the house willing to vacuum due to its astronomically loud and painful ruckus. well, alejandro obliged me once a few weeks back with my pink ear plugs stuck deeply into his little ears. this new guy was quiet enough i could enjoy humming to myself and actually hear the melody!


sadly while simultaneously pleasant, the sound is quite reminiscent of exactly how our electric mixer sounds when i am mixing chocolate chip cookie dough in a cooking bowl. this is such a wonderful noise to the ears in comparison to the cacophony our red Dirt Devil emitted on my weekly to bi-weekly cleansing excursions. but, it gets me thinking about sweet, sugary, buttery, eggy, floury, backed goods that i prefer to eat minimal amounts of and infrequently....:)


i often let my mind wander into spiritual tie ins of daily life events so i am thinking about how a vacuum cleaner relates to my relationship with Jesus. what most comes up is that there are definitely times we need to clean out our lives of pride, complacency, selfishness, bitterness, pain, laziness, and more. however if we use the super old Dirt Devil version, then our souls will still be soaked in dirty, yucky sin and mired thickly with the dust of the past that we cannot shake and heal from. we need to ask Jesus to clean us thoroughly with a Shark to suck away every last crumb and molecule of filth so that we can be pure before Him without holding anything back. of course, that is no biggie for Jesus. the trick is to ensure that we allow Him to get at every cobwebby corner and darkened spots like behind and under the couch. allow Him to clean us wholly through and through because He deeply wants to see us with nothing holding us back from having an intimate relationship with Him. 

hope you can find ways to connect with Christ more deeply as you vacuum clean your heart and mind!