Perspectives

Last Friday at this time we were just pulling into our driveway, heaving a sigh of relief after having performed three plays we'd been rehearsing with a group of homeschoolers for about ten weeks. We had so much fun, and saw some unexpectedly delightful performances from many of the children, especially our own. :)

One of the plays was called "No Room for a Sneeze," based on a folk tale you've probably all heard. In this version a man, his wife, and their seven children live in a too-small house, filled with noise, commotion, clutter, and din. The father laments, "There's no room even for a sneeze!" They consult a sage to see what is to be done, and over the course of the play the sage advises them to take their smaller farm animals in the house to live with them, then the large ones, and finally a beggar from town. It's noisy, it's smelly, and the beggar eats all their food and sleeps in their bed.

Finally the sage tells them to send the beggar away, and the animals back out into the barn. When they've cleaned up the house – the very same house that was too small at the beginning of the play – they find it "so quiet, so roomy, so comfortable."

That was me, yesterday. I did some Relief Society service in the home of a neighbor – inactive, someone I've never met – and the home was in such bad repair and nothing was organized or even clean. When I got home I walked around my own and suddenly all the things I have always found unbearable or embarrassing were no big deal. The vinyl flooring in our bathroom has a hole. So what? We see the hole, but I bet you wouldn't, if you came to visit us. And despite the hole the floor is clean. Some rooms may need painting, but the walls are whole and straight and ready for paint. The sewing room is the catch-all room and filled with clutter, and how wonderful it is that we have an entire room, small as it may be, that we have the luxury to clutter up and not worry about!

As I mowed the lawn outside, too, instead of seeing all the unplanted flowerbeds and the vegetable patch which is only weeds, I saw a large expanse of lawn which really looks pretty presentable. No junky cars up on blocks, no piles of trash, no unlandscaped patches. And I continued, for two days running now, to realize how wonderful my little piece of real estate is. :)