I Have Not Hoovered Since March

She is not lazy and she would like that established before anything else.

There were eleven weeks in the spring that took everything she had, and she is not going to list them here, and anybody who was near her at the time knows.

The house did not survive it.

Not in a dramatic way. There is nothing rotting and nobody is at risk. It is that everything is one layer behind. The hall has coats on the bannister that belong to another season. There is a pile on the stairs. The bath has a ring. The spare room is where things went in March and stayed.

And she has not hoovered since March, and she knows the exact week because she remembers thinking, that week, I will do it properly at the weekend.

Here is what has happened since, quietly, without her deciding it.

Two people have said, in that way people do, that they would love to come over sometime. A cousin asked if she wanted company one evening. Somebody from the school run offered to drop something round.

And every time she has said, warmly and instantly: oh, do not, it is chaos in here.

Six months of that sentence. She has not once said no. She has said the house is not ready, which is different and which sounds so reasonable that not one of them has ever pushed.

And the loneliest thing about the whole spring is that she has done it to herself with a phrase that everybody accepted.

Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled

Sit down on the sofa a minute, because there is a house in Luke with a woman running it into the ground, and the first thing the Lord does is say her name twice.

And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful.Luke 10:41

Martha, Martha.

Before the correction, before the one thing is needful, before anything about the serving at all, He says her name and He says it twice, which is what people do when they are trying to get somebody to look up.

And what He names is not laziness. Careful and troubled about many things. She is not doing too little. She is carrying too much, and He can see it, and He says so out loud in her own kitchen with the pans still going.

Hear this on your own sofa. He is not standing in your hall taking an inventory, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture has Him name a woman's exhaustion before He names anything else in the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has carried you through eleven weeks in the spring that took everything you had.

Now let me name what the phrase is doing, because it is not a lie and that is exactly why it works.

It is chaos in here is true. Nobody could contradict it. And it is the most effective door in the world, because it does not require the other person to accept a refusal. It gives them a reason to withdraw politely and to feel considerate about doing it, and all six of them did, and none of them will ever push.

You did not build that on purpose. You said it once in March because you were on the floor, and it worked, and a thing that works gets said again.

Hear this too, and let it land where the pile on the stairs is. You have not shut anybody out, and Scripture is what says so. What is written has the Lord name Martha twice before He says one word about her house, and the Spirit of God has never once made the state of a room the condition of a welcome.

And I will not do the thing this subject usually does, so let me be plain about it. Nothing here says a home gathering is more real than a Sunday morning, and nothing here is aimed at somebody who genuinely has no place to open. If you are in a room in somebody else's house, or in a situation you cannot invite anybody into, this article is not a rebuke and you are not behind.

This one is for the woman with a hall full of coats and six months of a sentence that worked.