The Parable of the Toilet Bowl and Bathroom Scrubber...

I do not know what has gotten into me today. I was quite free as I have severed the Internet connection of my home office. I got so much done without the Internet connection. I managed to do a lot of reading and I managed to take a nap for 3 long hours. Okay, that's not a nap. It was lack of sleep and I was replacing my sleep bank. Then, I have so much extra time in hand before my work starts. I did all my paperwork and since I have nothing much to do today, I decided to read a chapter of book written by Kathryn Kuhlman. I stopped after reading three chapters because the eyes were spilling water and it was difficult to read in a flooded condition.

I was at my house in town and hubby has not been going there for some time. Nobody does the cleaning for me. Yeah, I know I sound like a spoil brat. And my hubby does the laundry as well, I don't even know how to wash any piece of clothing. So, I have an hour plus of free time before picking up my precious from school. I was thinking of cleaning the bathroom as it's the smallest part of the house and it looks like it needed a real good scrub. I was really energetic to do it coz well, I can do anything as long as I am willing to do it. Hubby says I'm multi-talented.... hahahhaha.... I didn't tell him I was gonna scrub the bathroom. Thank God he didn't call while I was halfway doing it or I would have run away from the house. I need all my strength to keep my focus on the scrubbing work.

I remembered seeing hubby cleaned the toilet bowl before. I was a little bit smarter in cleaning this time round. The last time I cleaned the whole house, I started from the floor then I moved on to the window and the ceiling and then the floor... *gasp* So, now I start from the top and moved to the bottom. I chose the toilet bowl first. I had to read the label in search of the toilet cleaning liquid. Found it among the bottles of whatever... I don't know how much to squeeze, no recipe so I simply squeeze and found the toilet brush hanging by the side. Good... the handle wasn't dirty. Then, I became really creative in my cleaning like I've done it my whole life.

I started very well-prepared. I have a few rubbish bin bags because I was ready to throw away almost anything that was too grimy. Sorry, no photos... I was all alone at home. You would puke looking at my bathroom. I was happy to look at the scrubbed toilet bowl where the stain turned white. Such great achievement I felt. I was so creative that, I found a few old toothbrushes. No worries, I threw them away after they have served me.

Yeah, I did just that. I didn't learn it from the Internet. As you know me, I can be very creative. I started scrubbing the layers of dirt. You read that right, layers... it just peeled off like your scabs. It was fun at first to see that the toilet bowl is actually white in colour instead of brownish yellow. And I went on to brush the side of the toilet bowl and together with the piping that was covered with dust. It's all white now but halfway doing it I wanted to puke. It wasn't fun at all. I was thinking of maybe I should pray in tongues while doing it as I'm also a good multi-tasker. I couldn't even open my mouth. I just wanted to puke and I was afraid that the water from the toilet bowl or any of the surface would spurt into my mouth. 

Then, I looked at the tiled walls. It was suppose to be white as well. I found a big brush, three times the size of the one shown in the picture. Mind you, I do not have rubber gloves. I did it with my bare hands but with another hand holding the hose. As long as there's clean water flowing on my hand, I don't feel that yucky. I don't have any liquid detergent for the wall so I used my hair shampoo. Now, my hair smell like my bathroom wall... errr.... no, no... the bathroom wall smell like my hair. I gave every piece of tile really good surface scrub and then I was holding on to the toothbrush as some areas in between the piping was beyond the reach of the big brush. Viola~! All the black grime in between the tiles came off and I was really feeling the great achievement. Such pride I have with my ability to make the bathroom clean.

Then, I gave the marbled floor a good scrub as well using the floor brush. I have lots of equipment at home thanks to my hubby. It was a good wash, it's like rubbing the dirt off the skin of potatoes. Well, potato is the only dustiest thing that my bare hands came in contact with. Can't think of any metaphors to describe what I was doing. Then, I need to wash away all the fallen grime, if only they were gold, I would be an instant billionaire. 

The water pressure at the second top most floor of the apartment was very low. I was imagining a big gush of water from the hose would send all the grime and hair down the only hole in the bathroom. Well, all the grime got stuck between the filter holes. I wanted to cry by then, because I wouldn't even pick up a strand of fallen hair on the floor and now I have so much grime to pick with my bare hands. I would have to immerse my hand in a big bottle of Dettol after that. Thank God for a little bit of cow sense left.

My nemesis - the plastic bag. Hubby loves plastic bags because he said it serves us good. I dislike plastic bags, but the plastic bag that I hated came to my rescue. I grab a small one and used it as glove and I started picking up the grime and hair and whatever shit that I couldn't recognize from blocking the drainage system. The water couldn't send all the dirt to the hole and again I was using the brush and I became really frustrated. Some stain wouldn't go away. But it was 90% clean according to me. There, I've done something useful this year.

...HOW I ACTUALLY FELT...

In less than 3 minutes into scrubbing the toilet bowl with the toothbrush, I was on the verge of giving up. Then, suddenly I was thinking of how did Jesus wash people's feet... with bare hands. I wanted to cry at that point of time. And then I remembered my friends asking me to hire hourly maid so other's could do the cleaning for me. I was thinking I will NEVER let anyone clean my toilet bowl because I would feel so humiliated. I wouldn't want to pay a person who came all the way from another country to earn an honest living and then let her kneel down on my bathroom floor to scrub my toilet bowl. I will not know how much to pay her. I know I wouldn't want people to pay me to clean the toilet bowl. 

Scrubbing the wall was easy but all the grime gathered on the floor and with the low pressure water, it looked like it was stagnant. Some of the stain on the sink wouldn't even go away and it was really frustrating having to scrub the same spot a few times. After you clean it with water, it sparked for a second. Believe me. It sparked for a second only then it miraculously changed colour. It was stained again! I scrubbed again!

Something came into my mind at that point of time. I don't know how my head work wonders at such crucial time of cleaning. A vision of the condition of the human heart, spiritually.... just appeared.

God showed me that most of our hearts were not kept pure and clean. The heart couldn't sparkle with love because there were too many layers of dirt covering the real one underneath. We were so engrossed with the earthly things that even our own actions and emotions were not aligned with what God wanted. We lost the very heartbeat that we ought to follow. Instead, we follow the tempo of the world and dance with the devils. Then, when the heart has been covered with so much sin, the layers hardened and started to crack. There is always still hope. The layers cracked and when God hears the real heart crying for help due to suffocation, He reached out to us in ways that we couldn't fathom. Then, His love started clearing away all the layers of dirt. It was an uphill battle. Whoever says it's going to be easy? Then, why the stain wouldn't go away? It went off and came back again. It's us. It's like an addict who went for rehab and then walk back into the devil's trap and fall again and again and again. How to keep it clean again? I do have the answer. God showed me everything while I was scrubbing and cleaning. Keep your focus unto Jesus. Never lose focus. The big gush of water would be the wake up call but there are times there's no big gush of water to jolt us from our deep slumber. A stream of flowing water would wake us up in due time. The small flowing stream proved that He's faithful to us. Just let Him do the cleaning of the heart. We couldn't be perfectly clean as all of us fall short of His glory. And He accepted us for our peculiarities. It's okay to go to Him dirty, He would do the cleaning if we allow Him to.

I know I need to give the toilet bowl and bathroom a few more rounds of good scrub before it sparks again. Same as our heart condition. Psalm 51:10 says it all.... 

PS. Whoever says that you will only meet God while kneeling down at the church's rough-carpeted floor during altar calls? Fancy meeting Him while on your knees scrubbing the toilet bowl and washing the grime off the bathroom wall and floor and getting yourself soaking wet as the hose sprayed in all the wrong directions. 

Be blessed...