I Don't Wanna Squeegee the Shower Walls!

The writing you are about to read is meant for one reason alone: that those of you who are going through trying times, whether personally or known, will find encouragement to stay the course. May God break down the enemy's barriers, which so easily keep us from being real with one another. For we know that God's word and desire is for us to share with one another, so that in knowing truth, we can become real in our friendships and in prayer, learning to love one another and Him more each and every day. You are not alone. Let this be a break in the ice that starts a process of deeper reality.

Showers are a daily occurrence in our household. But today's shower would bring about a unique lesson.

Finishing my shower, I turned the faucet to the off position, opened the door, and made a quick reach to the left for my towel hanging on the towel rack. Why is it that even here in the Florida sunshine, I don't like the feeling of the cool air hitting my wet body? Even with the warmth of this climate, the cool air in the bathroom sends chills, followed by goose bumps, all over me. From head to toe, I am freezing! I know, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to the average person out there. But I guess that is one of the unique traits God gave me specifically. Why? I don't know that I have figured it out yet.

Okay, so back to reaching for the towel...

Leaning forward, flipping my wet hair off of my shoulders and over my head, I began to dry myself off. It was at that point God's soft voice whispered a question in my mind:

"Are you going to squeegee the shower walls today?"

"What?" was my somewhat shocked response. "Why, no! I don't wanna squeegee the shower walls," I retorted in a matter-of-fact, confident tone, with a somewhat snippy edge rumbling in the background. "Not today," I stated.

Why on earth would God ask me whether or not I was going to squeegee the shower walls today? I couldn't shake the question. So I mustered up the nerve to come before His throne and asked God, "Why on earth did You ask me that question?"

What followed within the quiet wet walls of my shower was a unique lesson time, alone with my incredible Savior. A lesson I needed today. A lesson you might find to be helpful too.

His question started me thinking about what was so important about squeegeeing the shower walls anyway.

"I don't see why it's so important that I squeegee the walls every single day!"

His soft voice responded, "You used to."

Well, yeah, I used to. In the beginning, when we first moved into this beautiful place we call home.

This was the first home Steve and I bought new and had built together from the ground up. The process was filled with memories of many walks down to the lot, watching them dig the footers, pour the concrete, raise the walls. As I stood in the middle of this shower stall, those wonderful memories began flooding my mind. The excitement of owning our own home here in Celebration, Florida. A place that seemed so out of financial reach for us when we first moved here from Ohio. But we knew God had placed us here, and had placed us in real estate, so with the market growing each year, along with some dear friends' assistance, we saw everything become reality! I don't know if I ever truly reached the point of believing that it was indeed real. That we were living the dream. But we did it... no, God did it!

"I'm not the only one who takes showers in here!" I reminded God.

"Steve doesn't squeegee the walls either!"

"No one else squeegees the walls in the other bathroom!"

"I'll bet most people don't squeegee their shower walls either!" I continued.

But again, His soft voice responded, "It doesn't matter what the others do or don't do."

Just recently, He had taught me a great lesson through Simon Peter's walk with Him. "What about him?" Peter had asked Jesus about the other disciple. "What does it matter what I do with him... You follow Me," Jesus responded. Now it seemed I was finding me in the same type of situation. Funny how His answer doesn't change a bit. Even in something as minor as squeegeeing the shower walls.

"It's not like these doors are brand new anymore!"

"What good does it do to squeegee the walls if I can't clean the whole shower stall?"

To which He questioned, "Ah, is that it? These are no longer 'new' walls?"

Well... ouch! Deep inside my stomach, I could feel the thud of a well-deserved ouch! Not new anymore, are they? The newness has lost its punch? Its ability to shine? No longer a brand new shower, beautiful, radiating a glow that called for the angelic sounds of "Ahhhhhh" to echo between the walls, signifying something perfect?

Okay, okay! So it's just some silly shower walls! But are these shower walls a great representation of how we humans typically, over time, treat things? How we treat each other? Maybe even how we can find ourselves treating God?

Do we find that the "Ahhhhhh" and beauty in the new thing or relationship stirs up in us a desire to respond to its needs, wanting to do everything we can to keep it always just like this? Isn't it true that, over time, we tend to lose our intent focus on it, slipping little by little into a lesser response to its needs, eventually resorting to either a common drone of existence together, or a straight-out decision not to do whatever it took before, since after all, "it" can never be new again?

Like the shower walls, could it be that our relationships suffer needlessly, all due to the fact that we fail to mindfully focus with intent, and willfully make the decision not to respond to each other and their needs? It's amazing that we have a God-given mind, where decisions can and must be made for each thought that enters in. We can intentionally decide to keep the newness alive and well. We can make a decision to do what is right, to do what is needed to keep it that way.

"Create in me a clean heart. And reNEW a right spirit within me."

"What good does it do to squeegee the walls if these walls don't continue to be mine anymore?"

He replied, "Ah, now we're getting somewhere, aren't we? So, you think that if you start distancing yourself from caring about these walls, and I should decide to move you, it won't hurt to leave them behind?"

Another ouch moment. Yes, it was true. I did have a tendency to distance myself from anything or anyone that might leave or hurt me. I've experienced loss in the past: the loss of both my older sisters in separate car accidents, as well as my mom to a heart attack. Sudden losses, laced with horrific shocking pain, have left death scars on my heart.

I remember Mom sitting me down for a talk after the loss of my second and oldest sister, Janice. Now, my mom was the epitome of the word love: always loving, caring, giving. So sitting me down for a talk was Mom's way of letting me know that she knew exactly what I was up to.

Funny, it brings back the memories where Mom would ask me a question. If I could position myself where I didn't have to look into her eyes, I could have possibly gotten away with lying, but that wouldn't be the case with my momma. She knew all too well that all she had to do was get me to look at her eye to eye. If I was guilty of doing something I shouldn't have done, even though my mind would be telling my mouth to say, "No, Ma, I didn't do that!", my mouth would always follow the will of my momma's eyes, resulting in a humbling, "Yes, Momma, I did it."

So here was Mom, knowing full well that I had intentionally distanced myself from her, thinking that it wouldn't hurt so badly if and when I lost her too. And my momma wasn't going to stand for that! Not my loving momma!

During that talk, I opened up and began to release all of the hurt that had welled up inside my heart. The hurt of losing another sister to another accident. Why? Why would God let both my sisters die? Leave me? Leave Mom and Dad? Why? I came to a self-determined conclusion that I wouldn't let this happen again. That I would "fix me" from being hurt again. Ever again.

And so I had started distancing myself from the people that I loved and who mattered the most to me. That way it wouldn't hurt so much. I wouldn't feel the loneliness again. I wouldn't find my heart breaking with such intensity over the loss of someone I cared that deeply for, ever again. Or so I thought. Until my momma stepped in to rescue me.

Now in the shower, here I was again. However, this time the talk was with my Lord. This time it was a distancing from the house. A material possession. Something that doesn't live or breathe. Something that could only show it cared for me by being what it was intended to be in the first place: a human-built structure of wood and cement, with a roof, windows, electricity, and the ability to keep me cool or warm, depending on the need.

As I stood there, I found myself going back again to the night when Steve and I buried the Bible in the front porch foundation. The construction workers would be pouring the cement porch the next day. We had purchased a brand new Bible. Steve wrote a note to "Whoever finds and reads this," relaying salvation through Jesus Christ as our Savior. We added our picture inside the front cover, and then placed the Bible inside several zippered baggies, one inside the other, until we were confident that the plastic entombing would protect its contents.

With me in the patrol watch position, Steve began to dig a spot in the ground next to where the front door would be. We had decided that each and every person who came up to our front door to ring the doorbell would actually be standing on the Word of God. They wouldn't know it, but we would. It brought a smile to both of us as we took a moment to pray a dedication of the home back to God, back to Him for His use and His ministry to all who entered inside.

And yet now, five years forward, we found ourselves in the middle of a global and local financial meltdown. The real estate market had become very difficult over the last few years, bringing us to a critical time in our financial lives. Creditor calls were the only real use of our home phone line, demanding monies that did not exist.

We had gone from having more than enough to having nowhere near enough. All the contract closings that were set to close... all canceling, with no financial funds in sight. Three contracts that were supposed to close in one month all died, two within a two-hour timeframe of each other on the same day. It was late morning on a Thursday when the first call came. What was supposed to close the previous Monday would no longer be closing. It seemed the bank found something new on the credit report and refused funding. The contract had then become null and void by midnight Monday, resulting in the need for the potential buyers to reapply for the financing. This was something my buyers did not want to go through yet again, as it would end up costing them more in fees and costs.

As Steve came back around the corner, I shared with him in disbelief that this closing was dead in the water. He seemed to already know what was going to happen (God had enlightened him through prayer time). He then said to me, "Get ready, because the other contract isn't going to close either." Shocked, I exclaimed, "Don't even speak that into existence!" But I was too late. The phone rang again and, sure enough, just as Steve had foretold, the last and only contract on the books cancelled! Within a matter of minutes and days, we had moved from thousands of dollars of financial aid on the books to meet our family's needs, to zero... nothing... nada.

And so the story repeats itself, one creditor after another, all wanting what was rightfully due them. The only problem was, we didn't have any way to pay them back.

A filing for bankruptcy would stay our financial woes, but only for a short-lived time. And then once again, no more monies. No way to pay them back.

That was eight months ago. Since then, we have had small amounts of money dribble in through different means: rental referrals, virtual tours, signs, and the like. Enough to feed us, put gas in our car, and pay the hounds... whichever hound seems to be barking the loudest at the time.

We've both reviewed the list of things we just naturally took for granted, making conscious decisions to no longer do or have those things now. We're both okay with it. It actually feels good to get back to the basics in some areas of our lives. To determine what is really important, and to realize that which is not.

And as we proceed down this unknown path of living, not knowing when we might be told that we can no longer stay here, I am brought back to this particular lesson in time: here in my shower stall, discussing with my Lord whether or not I should squeegee the shower walls.

I am reminded that all of this, every last bit of everything, belongs to my God. From the walls of this home to its rooftop, from the business professions to this wonderful computer I am using to type these words, all belong to my God. The monies that came with the real estate boom were both monies well spent and those not spent so well. Monies from the sale of property, the resale of our dear little restored 1961 Austin Healey Frogeye Sprite, to the counting of coins... all belong to my God.

My God owns everything. It's His to decide who to give to and how much He will give to us humans for stewardship privileges. We cannot decide whether or not we want to be a steward. In this life, each one of us will be. The only decision we have is whether or not we will be good stewards of whatever He decides to give.

• Will we be teachable, moldable, into whom He desires us as stewards to become?
• Will we decide to give when He says to give, or will we decide to become inward takers, seeking only to fulfill our own self-wanted desires?
• Will He see us handling the people, as well as the material things He gives to us, just as He would handle them?
• Will we love, nurture, grow, and care for the people, as well as the material things He gives us, just as He would love, nurture, grow, and care for them?
• Will we determine not to allow time or circumstances to muddy our vision, seeking always to see them as new, providing the touch that speaks of His loving nature within us?
• Will we trust Him to decide what is best for us, trusting that He knows of things which we cannot even begin to comprehend or imagine?
• Will we let God be God, denouncing our ever-recurring inner requests to become our own little gods?
• Will we heed His soft loving voice, even in the most profound of places?

Can we fathom in our minds that He would meet us in what we might deem peculiar places? Places like a shower stall? A place where He could ask what appears to be a simple question, knowing full well the outcome, if we will only take the time to listen to His questions? Time to think about His questions? A place where He can find us totally uninhibited? Can we believe that He would love us enough to teach us life lessons, where as we begin to answer His questions, we find ourselves magnificently taught for the betterment of who He is within us? A place that brings us humbly to our knees, all the way to the feet of our Savior!

I take the squeegee off of the hook and stare at this beautiful man-made tool in my hand. Then, with a quick wipe of the tears blurring my vision, I begin to squeegee the shower walls. And as I move from top to bottom, row after row, I begin to notice the spots that have accumulated on the window walls of the shower stall. Etched spots that do not disappear with one pass of the squeegee. My heart sinks as I recall what these walls looked like in the beginning. The newness of the sparkle and shine they had, glass walls almost vanishing out of sight, appearing as if the shower were somehow without walls. Pristine they were then, but worn, spotted, and etched they have become now. All due to the willful neglect of the caretaker.

That caretaker was me. I was the guilty one, the steward who wasn't tending very well to that which God had given her. I had made the decision not to squeegee the shower walls. I was the one who came up with a lot of reasons why I wouldn't. The result of that decision didn't look bad on me. I didn't have etched spots on me, did I?

Had my intentional decision not to squeegee the walls resulted in a ricochet effect? Could those around me possibly see the etched spots in my life?

It was then that God reminded me of what He had done for me. The day I asked Him to be Lord and Savior of my life, He cleansed my etched spots. Etched spots: early signs of death and deterioration, due to wrong decisions, bad choices, living without His Lordship, and living without Him. But there was something different about His cleansing. I came out looking brand spanking new! No signs of the past! Nothing but clean, shining, beautiful new ME!

All because He chose to take up the squeegee with His own hands, to work His way through all of the sin of this world, from the top to the bottom. Relentless and determined to remove each and every etched spot and stain, nonstop, until the walls of humankind's shower stall could be sealed with His life, creating something that could and would never be etched with spots again...

He made us brand spanking new!

So when I finish my shower in the morning, I will do what I should have been doing all along. I will squeegee the shower walls, remembering with every swipe my incredible moment with a God who loves me. And I will never forget the moment He used a simple squeegee to leave an everlasting lesson of love on the walls of my heart.

Joanna Mikel writings, October 24, 2008