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    An Example of Kindness

    11/17/11

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    "The true character of the loveliness that speaks for God is always unnoticed by the one possessing that quality. Conscious influence is prideful and unchristian. If I wonder if I am being of any use to God, I instantly lose the beauty and the freshness of the touch of the Lord. “He who believes in Me . . . out of his heart will flow rivers of living water” (John 7:38).  And if I examine the outflow, I lose the touch of the Lord. 
    Who are the people who have influenced us most? Certainly not the ones who thought they did, but those who did not have even the slightest idea that they were influencing us. In the Christian life, godly influence is never conscious of itself. If we are conscious of our influence, it ceases to have the genuine loveliness which is characteristic of the touch of Jesus. We always know when Jesus is at work because He produces in the commonplace something that is inspiring."
    -Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest August 21st 


    There are some people who leave an indelible mark on our lives. Recently, I went visit one of my original Carpe Diem clients who is in a nursing home.  This woman was a source of encouragement and hope to me; a reflection of what life can hold after living through many decades. She lived in one of the most beautiful houses that I have ever been in. It is older than Mount Vernon and decorated with such taste that I still dream of a high canopy bed like the one in her guest room. 

    She gave me the moral support that I needed in a very important time of my life. I was not even in a year into starting my company, Carpe Diem Cleaning, and working hard to figure out my business and this thing called life. She was my every Friday client and my time in her house was for cleaning, but it was also to have a good conversation. I remember she was keeping up with the OJ Simpson trial and one of our first debates was whether humans are basically good or basically sinful. 

    Every week in those early years ended with hope because I got to spend time with her. She showed me that money was not the answer to life. She had every material dream but she taught me that life is really about the heart. Whether it was the words of encouragement or some extra clothes that she didn’t need any more or a bouquet of roses from her exquisite rose garden, I left her house knowing someone believed in me. Then life happened and it got busy and I wasn't able to personally be there every week. She continued to support us whether it was always keeping Carpe Diem as her cleaning company (even during some of our growing pains) or being a cheerleader for my employees. Kindness was her underlying motivation throughout time. 

    A few weeks ago, her husband called me to share that her health turned and she was now in a home. He and their daughter have done an incredible job taking care of her and even in this season, their example of faithfulness has been humbling to watch. When I went to visit her, she didn’t fully recognize me and she was very tired. I was not sure what to do, so I went to find someone in the home to ask what was best. A nurse came with me, just to check in, and as we were talking, she shared how sometimes my friend would not remember who the nurse was, but as she tucked her in at night, my friend would say "thank you" and "I love you." I am hoping to go sometime soon when she is having a good day, so I can say "thank you" to her one more time. 

    One of my observations has been when we get older, whatever filters we developed through adulthood, simply erode.  I have known some people whose filters have stopped working and now they are just plain mean. Any façade of kindness no longer exists and what's really inside, comes out. But with my friend, as her filters have faded, only has kindness left. Once again, she has made an impression on me on how to live my life well.

    Lord, let my heart be soft towards you so that some day when my filters are gone, people will see a loving person.  Thank you A. for being a guidepost for me!

    Do you know what you do not know?

    4/4/11

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    Grace and Peace Friend,

    Have you ever though about what you do not know? Keeping a clean house for myself was never a priority in my life until I met a woman named Fannie.  I’ve scrubbed countless toilets, and up until meeting Fannie, there was not much that could phase me from a dirt perspective.

    However, Fannie was referred to me as a client and as I began services for her home, I was shocked to discover how filthy her home would become after just two weeks!  Compared to my other clients, I could not figure out how one small family could create such a combination of clutter and dirt in just a short amount of time!

    After several months of service (with the home back to its filthy state every other week when I arrived), Fannie requested that I do a one-time cleaning of her mother’s home four hours away, where her sister had been living.  While normally I tried to keep my service area local, I decided to make an exception for this recurring client (and frankly this was the stage in the business where I would do just about anything to get the revenue up!) So two Saturdays from then, I recruited a friend and we embarked on our roadtrip to go a’ scrubbin’.

    We arrived to discover that Fannie’s mother’s house where her sister had been living was filthy beyond what I could have ever imagined!  Neither a vacuum nor a single cleaning product had touched any surface in this house…possibly ever.  Decades of smoke, grease, and dirt layered in the kitchen.   Apparently at one point there had been raccoons that had come through the attic and, as we later learned, had been retained as pets by the sister in one of the bathrooms.  Yet another room we were unable to touch at all because it (the room, that is) was used as the cat’s permanent litter box.

    As I spent my day in that house of my client’s mother and sister, chiseling and scrubbing as I could, I realized something:   My client, Fannie, whose house was by far the dirtiest house on an every other week basis out of all of my clients, actually had a well-kept, sanitary home in comparison to what she had likely experienced as a child.  Fannie knew that her home was cleaner than what she had grown up with, yet she was clueless that still most homes were kept much cleaner than her own.  Fannie did not know what she did not know.  

    This “Fannie” experience helped me begin to think that surely I must also have blind spots in my own life- that just as Fannie has set her life course based on the standard she had known without realization of a different norm- that there could be areas in my life where I did not know what I did not know.   

    We all set the course of our lives based on our other experiences.  Fannie was doing amazingly well compared to how she had grown up but I don’t think she understood that there is a completely different way to live (that did not involve a filthy house!).  So many times we live life completely out of our experience. I began asking the Lord to please show me what areas of my life I live like Fannie! I slowly began to see how I had let the things I knew from my experiences influence my thought processes, communication, and the way I related to people, money and food. 

    The greater challenge to myself was to begin examining my own “glasses” of experience to be able to differentiate between what I see through those glasses and what is truly there. When we set out on what we believe is a true and right, do we know that we are seeing truth, or is it only just a slightly better version compared to our own experiences that looks like truth to us?

    In unlocking “the creative” in our lives, the first step is to learn to check our blind spots so that we can orient our own perspective.  This is an ongoing life journey- to discover the things we do not know.  How does one even begin? Start with cultivating curiosity. 

    Blessings,
    Wendy

    PS- Fannie later stopped services for unknown reasons and I didn’t hear from her.  Several years later, my sister, Jessica, returned to the office from a Carpe Diem Cleaning consultation, and proclaimed, “I just did an estimate for every two week services for a client whose home is the worst possible home we could possibly have ever taken on!  I even stepped in dried dog poop in the living room during the consultation!” She didn’t tell me the name of our new client, but I secretly thought that this new home was probably close to what Fannie’s had been like.  Well, a few weeks later, I was reviewing the list of new clients, and guess who had returned? :-)