sing, sweet nightingale

I hate cleaning floors.

There, I said it.  I hate cleaning floors.  Which is kind of awkward, considering I volunteered for about four months of housekeeping.

I'm not really sure why I hate it so much.  Maybe because it generally feels really futile, because I know that in a few minutes/hours/days, all my work will be completely ruined.  Maybe because it's really tedious, taking far longer to cover a small distance than I feel like it should.  Maybe because it forces me to stare at my feet, and I already feel like I do that far too much.

Mostly, actually, I hate cleaning large expanses of floors.  It's difficult to remember where I've cleaned already, it's hard to keep my piles of dust together and somewhere I won't track them all over the rest of the floor, and it seems an even more hopeless case than usual.

Seriously, honestly, cleaning floors often makes me cry.  Don't ask me to explain why.  I don't know.  I'd guess a mixture of frustration and boredom and resentment.

Tonight, during evening shift, I had another one of those cleaning-a-giant-floor meltdown moments.  Burst right into tears in the middle of the empty room.  And while I was blubbering and trying to pray, I said something strange, something I'd honestly not been thinking at all.
"God, I hate cleaning floors.  But right now . . . You have me cleaning floors.  So I'll do it."

And then I remembered something a dear friend told me months ago.
"Remember that all you're doing is preparation for something He might have for you down the road . . . and that you can do it with Him now, instead of by yourself."

Why do we have these nasty floor-cleaning moments, when God sticks us somewhere we hate, doing a job we hate, sometimes with people who are unpleasant?  I have no idea.  But do I have to know?  I don't think so.  I guess, for now, I'll just put my head down, grab God's hand, and clean that floor.  We'll worry about the why later.