On Paper Towels and My Need to Sop Up Life's Messy Mistakes

Image from  http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/how-do-paper-towels-absorb-water/

I have a lot of paper towels. Actually just a lot of towels, period.


I grew up around lots of paper towels-- the things you used for drying your hands that might still have a little bit of dirt on them, for patting vegetables dry, for cleaning up anything that you didn't want to fool with having to rinse and squeeze out a sponge. They were awesome-- just wipe and snap! throw it in the garbage. You're done.

When my husband and I married, I merged our collections of bathroom towels, keeping some for public use and others for garage/lake/project towels. I grew up trained in the idea that all towels and materials have a use, so "nice" towels got demoted to garage towels, from garage towels, they turned into rags, and after that...well, you can always use rags.

I might have learned to be too resourceful. Recently I've started having to make NBA-worthy jumps and dunks to toss the garage towels on top of the shelves, we have so many. And recently I discovered that I have rolls of paper towels tucked into nearly every cabinet and shelf in the house.

I might be obsessed with cleaning.

It's laughable, but also it's unfortunately not a bad metaphor for how I often live life--with a mop and bucket, ready to clean and squeegee away any mistakes, pretending as if they never happened. It's a tight, controlling way to live, but it satisfies my need to keep up appearances, to cover up my weaknesses.

This isn't a Biblical way of thinking, nor is it a relational and spiritual way of living. It's surface and succinct.

I wonder what would happen if I ran out of all my towels? If some messes didn't get cleaned up right away, if things were a little stickier? Well, I speak from personal experience in regards to the house--there'd be more ants and grime, so I think I'll try to stay on top of the cleaning as best as I can. But in regards to the metaphor, maybe I can let some things go, risk getting a little dirtier, and not minding the stickiness.

That's life, after all. And sometimes it's in those sticky and dirty places we often learn the most.

Here's to the empty roll.