“What can wash away my sins? Nothing but the blood of Jesus.”
I was washing my youngest’s clothes today and, since I had time, looking for and spraying stains. I don’t always look over his clothes and sometimes just wash them on the heaviest cycle with extra soap, hoping the stains will come out in the wash.
But they rarely do. And putting it into the dryer only sets the stain further.
I let him wear stained clothes until the next laundry day brings another chance to ignore or treat the stains.
Regrettably, I usually opt to not stain-treat again and my son is in a soiled/cleanish version of his favorite clothes for yet another week.
On the other hand, my mom is so good at treating stains. Whenever she helps me by starting a load of laundry, each stain gets treated and come out. My laundry never comes out cleaner than when she washes the clothes.
She’s methodical. She pays attention. No stain is too small to not notice or too big to doom the garment to the trash. She takes her time to care for the clothes expecting they will come out clean.
With her method, the stains come out. The clothes are made new again. There is no lingering evidence of what soiled the garments.
“Though your sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool.”
Isaiah 1:18b NKJV
Isn’t sin a lot like a stain?
You know it’s there. You can’t ignore it. You hope nobody notices it when you’re out in public, but it’s on your mind all day, hoping that no one will call you out on it.
Sin is like a stain in that if not dealt with promptly it affects you for days, weeks, months, years, or even decades.
When we leave a sin-stain unattended on our lives, we too are kidding ourselves hoping it will “come out in the wash.” And just like that poor stained garment, it comes out just the same; maybe even worse due to time and environment setting the stain deeper.
This Spring, I was treating a stain: self-indulgence.
I was on a fan-fiction binge for a couple of months and it was effecting how well I parented: how present I was with my kids, my capacity for interruption, and how intentional I was with how we spent our time during the day.
I let screen time run rampant because how can I expect the kids to not be on a screen when I am? and how can I entertain them while I dissolved into reading on my phone?
It made us all cranky, disconnected, and short-tempered.
I was reading during my Lenten phone curfew days – no screens after 9:00pm – but my screen time more than doubled. That meant I was on my phone for hours and hours while my children are awake. … that’s not exactly how I wanted to be.
And yet I indulged.
I’m not against reading fiction, it’s actually quite fun! Though, I’m realizing I need to create boundaries for my time spent on it.
Just like I make sure my kids finish their school and clean up after themselves before watching tv, I needed to create that for myself with reading fiction – especially on my phone.
Before I start reading fiction, I need to make sure I’ve done what I set out to do with my day. This includes doing school with the kids, keeping up on household tasks like laundry and dishes, getting outside, moving my body, and knowing what I’m making for dinner.
Even with all those things accomplished, I could still spend hours staring at my phone reading instead of paying attention to my children. So I’m going to try setting a time limit. I can realistically read for an hour a day without throwing off my routines or taking attention away from my kids. It becomes a problem when I read for 4-6 hours and don’t give attention to anything else. So I’ll try 1 hour and know that I can have another hour the next day.
Since I know I’m sensitive to what stories contain, I have to set a boundary around content warnings. Nothing graphically violent, sexually explicit, or depicting abuse. I’m not here for that kind of reading as entertainment, so I’ll be careful with myself.
While I am hoping that these boundaries help me have fun without losing myself in fan fiction, I am also aware that I may have to quit entirely to stop myself from indulging continuously.