My Kitchen Window

I don’t think I spend more time looking at (or through) anything as much as I do through my kitchen window. It’s where I wash my hands, peel carrots, do dishes, etc. I spend (it seems like) enormous amounts of time in the kitchen and probably look through the window hundreds of times a day. Nothing surprising there. The view is rather dull – merely my neighbor’s front door and shrubbery across the street – so I try to spice it up a little. Right now I have a whole host of clutter on the kitchen windowsill (vitamins for the kids, me, the cat, matches, a basket of onions, a candle, other junk and a decorative blue wine bottle that stands in as a zip-lock bag dryer), but mostly I’m referring to the verbage I’ve taped to my window.\par
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On the left is a 3×5 card with the saying “Dirt by the inch is a cinch, dirt by the yard is hard.” This is to remind me to keep at the dishes all day long rather than letting them accumulate until after dinner – when the last thing I feel like doing is spending an hour cleaning up the kitchen. Surprisingly, this has actually been helping, as every time I see the card (it’s a recent addition so I haven’t gotten so used to it that it becomes invisible yet) I pick up something or put dishes in the dishwasher or unload the sink strainer or something. The happy result is that my evening cleaning project is taking less time. This is a good thing as I tend to get grumpy when I’m doing dishes at 9:00 p.m.\par
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On the right is a piece of card-stock with Prov. 31: 10-31 written on it as artistically as I could do in a hurry. It is now a little blotted and stained from splashed water. My goal is to memorize the whole thing (all 21 verses – wow). The thing has been up there since July. Pathetic, I know. But the\’c3\’82\’c2\~verse that I’ve come to in my agonizingly slow memorizing project is “Her husband is known in the gates, where he sits among the elders of the land.” Odd isn’t it? I’ve always thought of the Proverbs 31 passage to be rather like a short handbook on how to be the perfect wife. It’s always seemed strange to me that one descriptor of the perfect wife is that her husband is an elder in the land – I mean, isn’t that kind of up to him? How can she make him wise and capable and respected? How can I look at that and expect to somehow meet that standard? Well – I don’t know. Maybe somebody can shine some light on that. To me it indicates two things: first, that this incredible wife is so capable and hard-working that she frees up her husband’s time enough that he can be “sitting around” being wise rather than at home managing things. Second, it indicates the incredible influence a wife apparently could have; that somehow her efforts and perhaps wisdom\’c3\’82\’c2\~could be a very important factor in her husband’s status and abilities. I find that amazing and convicting and a little scarry. But it’s a good thing to contemplate as I gaze through my window.