Last week, my van was a hideous mess. There was an audible shambling, sliding sound every time I came to a short stop, as the detritus of our endless commute migrated from back to front. Every time someone opened a door, something would tumble out -- sometimes a book or a toy, but sometimes something more squalid: a muddy sock, an apple core, or even a chicken bone. I was disgusted and ashamed, but I just couldn't find the time to clean it.
Finally, at my wit's end, I took desperate measures: I volunteered as a driver. Twice a month, I'm now committed to drive middle school kids from one campus to the other. And now, time or no time, I have no choice: I have to clean that van.
Oh, of course I wanted to do my part for the school. But most of all, I wanted to get that van clean; and I knew that the only way I would find time to do it was if I knew that guests would be seeing the inside of it. I've pulled this trick on myself before. Bathroom filthy? Invite finicky teenage girls for a sleepover. Yard a wreck? Plan a backyard cookout. Now I have to get it done. Shame is a powerful motivator.
I know, I know, I should be motivated to do these things out of love and concern for my family. But . . . I'm not. I do other stuff for them, really nice stuff that they like! But I've never managed to internalize the idea that it's a sacred, womanly honor to provide a tidy and welcoming haven for my husband and kids. I hate cleaning. If I don't trap myself into it, it just doesn't get done.
That's the bad news: my motives stink. The good news? It does get done!
I used to worry a lot about having the right motives for doing good (or just basic decent) works: after all, St. Paul said, "f I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing." (1 Corinthians 13:3)
We ought to be helping people because we love them, because we love God. But maybe we look at our lives and realize that we have every other motive besides love: spiritual vanity, or a desire to annoy people who expected less of us, or because we can't get out of it; or, of course, out of a sense of guilt. As a teenager, I once miserably confessed to an adult, "Every good thing I do, I do out of guilt."
"Well," he said, "It's a start!"
And that there is the key: it's a start. It's the first step on the right path. As long as you recognize that guilt or any other imperfect motivation is not ideal, and as long as you aren't content to stay that way forever, then doing the right thing for the wrong reason is actually not all that bad.
For one thing, it's ten million times better than doing nothing at all. You can fool yourself into thinking that you're being courageously honest by refusing to behave decently while your heart is indecent. But that's not courage; that's pride, or maybe just plain old sloth. It may not profit you to grumble bitterly as you hand over a fiver to the soup kitchen, but it will profit the soup kitchen. And that's not nothing.
For another thing, doing good works can be transformative, if you're open to being transformed. Just do the right thing, no matter how bitter and squalid your insides are, and tell God, "Look, we both know what's really going on here. Can you do something with it anyway? And can you change me?" If we're looking for courageous behavior, there's a good example: it takes some strength and guts to admit, "I'm kind of a crappy person right now. Help!"
Now, as with any idea, it's possible to take this principle too far. Once, someone I had quarreled with came over and hugged me to make amends. When I responded happily, he said flatly, "Oh, it's not about you at all. I'm just doing this for Christ." Needless to say, our reconciliation was not the warmest.
But if you are thinking of volunteering, or being helpful or kind to someone, or following some commandment, or even praying, don't wait until your motives are pure. Do the right thing, and ask God to help your heart catch up with your hands: "Lord, I am sincere. Help my insincerity!" We learn to love God by serving Him. That's how it works.
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This right here: “Look, we both know what’s really going on here. Can you do something with it anyway? And can you change me?”
SO MUCH WIN! :D I’ll be saying that more from now on.
“I’m kind of a crappy person right now. Help!”
Yeah, well, that about sums up my past year. God is still working on this (points in a circular motion to self). Thanks for another unbelievably perfect reminder of how to march towards holiness. Thanks!
Simcha, do you have a hidden camera into my life? Are we twins, separated at birth? I love you for this!! I have always said that housework is the booby prize that came along when I became the stay home parent. I don’t love it, I’m not good at it, I have never found my way through it, and yes, house guests or car guests have been my best motivation that forces me to tackle the great shame of my messy slobbish ways. Note to self: sign up for carpool and plan some dinner parties, and pray: can you change me?
“Without a deadline, baby, I wouldn’t do nothing.”—Duke Ellington
Me too! So God bless the people we invite over . . . for they force me to tackle jobs I don’t like!
“I’m kind of a crappy person right now. Help!”
That’s practically my daily prayer word for word :)
Often times it is true—“I can’t think my way into right acting, but I can act my way into right thinking.” My faith has grown by leaps and bounds according to this principle and, of course, by the Grace of God. Changing my behavior to accord with what I perceived God’s will to be has lead to incredible results, which then increased my faith. For me, it all started out with a sincere prayer—somewhat along the lines of “I’m kind of a crapy person right now. Please help me.”
Kind of like servile fear-at least we’re NOT doing the wrong stuff, even though there are better reasons(like love of God) to refrain from it.
I wonder how many of us are here because of parents who, at least initially, through servile fear did not choose abortion?
excellent and about the van cleaning…why not make one of your kids responsible for it? Every Friday on our big cleaning day, my 11 yo son has as one of his jobs to clean the windows inside the van and (theoretically) get anything out of there that doesn’t belong. Delegate!!! : )
Oh this is SO wonderful! I could have written this. (Well, I would have written something and it would have come out badly, but since you have written it it came out wonderful.) I know it is vanity but I have to invite people (like maybe invite my mother or mother-in-law to fly in for a visit) THEN the house will get clean. One time I was cleaning, just because I was in the mood for some strange reason, and my youngest says “Mommy, who’s coming? Pretty pathetic but true :)
Marcy K: Oh my goodness, I get the same question from my 4 year old whenever I tackle the housecleaning in more than my usual half-hearted way.
If you’re doing the right thing for your children or your friends or your husband, then it IS love, even if you’re not doing whatever it is with enthusiasm. Love is doing, not feeling. It’s an act of love to force yourself to take on additional driving responsibility just because you know that this will in turn force you to clean the van.
I have a pretty clean and neat house most of the time, but my car is embarrassingly dirty. Like dirty socks/french fries/banana peels/used kleenex dirty. So maybe I should offer to drive more often.
I try an invite someone over weekly for dessert (easier than dinner)- then we clean!
parents- sorry to be a downer but PLEASE clean the car (or get the kids to do it)- I know a mom and four kids who died in a crash because a can rolled under the brake :(
A great reason why the call to love thy enemy is the surest test of love. You get nothing out of it in return and hence it is a completely selfless act.
@Claire lol, yes, the car is the last frontier :).
As for the general idea of the post, yes I’m smiling because I’m another creep for Christ :)! That God would take a little pity on this and help me do something about it, is my ongoing petition as well. Wouldn’t “inst-transformation” be nice? What is funny is remembering when I first started reading hard core Catholic books. “Wow”, I thought, “these people really have low self esteem”. I shuddered when Teresa of Avila declared that she was a lowly worm on this earth. I also had a bit of a temper tantrum when the whole “fallen nature” dilemma hit me with full force. In a fit ow pique I demanded of my confessor to explain to me why God, insists that we run marathons when original sin has done the equivalent of cutting a leg off.
“Because He wants you to make HIM your other leg”, he responded patiently.
This good priest also unlocked for me the secret of trudging forward with an act of the will in the service of love, when “feelings” aren’t quite lining up (cooking food in week 10 of pregnancy anyone?) Right now I have a six y.o. home from school because Halloween was so utterly fantastic that it unglued him. It wasn’t enough that we were at school nearly the entire day watching two parades and serving up eyeball and rat punch. The unraveling started when after the big night our good little soldier needed to take a shower to get the GI Joe camo of his face. “You made the bubbles go up my nose!” He shrieked. He cried himself to sleep and then resumed crying when he pee’d the bed and needed *to take another shower*! Now he is at home because of wilting soldier syndrome and is trying to make his own kite for some unexplainable reason. He approaches me every few minutes to tie knots on it, and then *untie* them…Yes, this is why we have such refined senses of humor, eh? I would like to think that this is a sign that over the years I’ve made some progress.
Yipee, off to survey the damage to his bed…
Oh, and has anyone here ever had a kid who tried to stow away a little pet clam under the seat of the van?
I think this is cute and spot on. Unfortunately, guests can’t motivate me to clean my car. I have to wait until it’s so gross and disgusting it makes me red-faced angry. That’s when I find the time to clean it, and usually with the kids trapped in the part of the car I’m not cleaning. It’s funny, because I enjoy cleaning, and am good at it, it’s just the monotony and maintaining that throw me for a loop. Oh, and the kids undoing what I just did. Yeah.
I am anal about a clean car, and fortunately my kids were somewhat embarrassed to have their friends see the car of house a mess. So they were motivated to clean if guests were invited. And if no guests were invited, imagine how they felt when I’d dump stuff off the upper deck into the yard or into the driveway from the car!
It defeats the purpose of this post but little clams rotting under car seats emit such a stunningly foul odor that they could make an excellent instrument of torture to an avowed enemy.
This is just what I needed to read today. I’ve been grumpily putting raffle tickets in envelopes for the Christmas raffle feeling annoyed about all the changes the new priest is making…really not wanting to do this anymore. Now I’ll say that prayer and feel a bit better that at least the job is getting done even if I’m a rubbish person at the moment… Just off to Mass it’s 5.30pm here in England.
Thank you. This post, as do almost all of them, helped. Maybe the ones that I don’t think helped help the most. Never really know about that. Just pursuing my inclination to over thinking. I’ll tell you something that I think doesn’t help, but I could be wrong—the automatic spell-check that these comment boxes have.
To Nancy: “So God bless the people we invite over . . . for they force me to tackle jobs I don’t like!” Interesting point: Would that mean that, by accepting to go over for a meal, I am doing an act of charity towards the person who invited me?
I mentioned to my husband this ongoing sense of guilt I have about this tactic: that I am willing to clean up the house for when friends and acquaintances visit, but I’m not that motivated to clean it up for my lovely family. He responded with: “That’s not guilt, that’s an understanding of diminishing returns.”
Posted by Marthe Lépine on Thursday, Nov 1, 2012 2:06 PM (EST): Interesting point: Would that mean that, by accepting to go over for a meal, I am doing an act of charity towards the person who invited me?”
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Or offering up a sacrifice, depending on the cooking skills?
:)
I remember my mother saying, “Brains and housework don’t mix.” What a great excuse sometimes!
I’m very, very glad that God doesn’t wait for us to have perfect motives before he sends grace into our lives. One of my favorite things to remember is that the Prodigal Son’s first motive for returning to his father was that he was sick of fighting the pigs for scraps of food! And this didn’t stop the father from welcoming him back.
You make a great point in this post. When I talk to people about forgiveness, some will say that they can’t forgive someone if they don’t “feel it.” I often tell them, “you don’t have to feel it! Just decide it.”
Mother Teresa of Calcutta had a dark night of the soul for 30 years and thought that God had abandoned her. She didn’t stop performing her mission in life just because she didn’t have consolations from God.
Feelings and intentions are sometimes overrated, as you so bravely explain in your own personal experiences.
Thanks for the great post.
My daughter (17 and special needs) and I have been reading all about Fatima for the month of October. She has mental retardation now called developmental disabilities along with being on the autistic spectrum. She tends to view life so much from only her needs, her perspective, her feelings, etc. So we really enjoyed the many little stories we read about the children who were asked to pray and make sacrifices for poor sinners. I am really blessed to have 2 brothers and 2 sisters (ages range from 48 to 64), we are all married and most have children. Only one sister and her husband have remained in the faith. So, my daughter and I, throughout our day, try to say a prayer before we try to tackle something we really don’t want to do. We use the children’s prayers or the Angel of Peace prayers…“My God, I believe, I adore, I trust and I love Thee. I beg pardon for those who do not believe, do not adore, do not trust and do not love Thee.” Or…“O Most Holy Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, I adore Thee profoundly. I offer Thee the most precious Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Jesus Christ, present in all the tabernacles of the world, in reparation for the outrages, sacrileges and indifference by which He is offended.” There are so many more. We hung them on our fireplace (non-working) to remind us throughout the day. I’m confident that God will do something with our little offering. Our Lady said, “So many souls go to Hell because they have no one to pray and make sacrifices for them.” To do things for love of my family (children and husband)—well they already know how deeply I love them. But, to do them for poor sinners, this is a real opportunity for the least of your brothers! HAPPY ALL SAINTS DAY! Thanks Simcha!
Sometimes I have the faith and pure desire to do something noble, but don’t have the means for what ever reason (time, distance, money, talent). Other times I have the means to do a noble act, but not the right motive (guilt, image, pride, greed, etc). So maybe, just maybe, they balance each other out like a math problem and I get credit for faith + works.
Like your friend said, “It’s a start.”
Dear Simcha,
I hope your husband and kids find time to do some things for you!
ah yes. God keeps giving me chance after chance to do this right, and I keep screwing it up with my pride. Thankfully, he’s giving me yet another chance right now, and things are going much better.
The best thing I ever did for the state of our home was hire a cleaning woman—but not for the reasons you’d think.
Once a week, before we she comes, all of us have to pick up all of our STUFF. She wouldn’t have much time to clean if she had to push around all those piles of stuff by herself—plus, she would pile everything randomly, making it hard to find things later.
It’s amazing how everyone kicks into action and the stuff gets put away. If only we could motivate ourselves to do this more often on our own, we wouldn’t have to pay a cleaning woman.
I love it. Sometimes we change from the inside out, and sometimes we change from the outside in.
Hi, Simcha!
My BW does use expectation of company as an excuse to get our house cleaned - I suspect it’s a common technique.
Regarding comments by others on your column - will recommend the “little clams stowed under the car seat” in a closed car to the CIA for getting enemy agents to talk!
TeaPot562
Several years ago I drove for a youth group activity that forced me to clean our van which housed 4 young children and was held together by pervasive stickiness, ball field dirt and angels. I felt I had done a fabulous job mucking it out and covering the spit-up smell. We made our way back to the church with a van full of seven sweaty 13-year-old boys and seven ice cream cones. From behind me I hear,“Gee, Mrs. X, why is your van such a mess?” As I turned to answer this only child, I watched him stick his ice cream cone to the ceiling of the van. I told him I had absolutely no idea ...
Thanks, Simcha!
Good post, Simcha, but do what my mom did (she raised a priest): Give the job to the older kids and reward the one who cleans the best with a sleep-over.
I hate it when I have to give a ride to people, like driving to Concord for a religous freedom rally. I throw everything in the trunk then it takes me months to find my stuff. Then just as I’ve found everything there is another rally. I love a messy car, but rotted clams I can do without.
I thought not having to do housework was the biggest reason to homeschool?
There must be a word for the junk that collects under car seats. Back in the days when pants had cuffs the stuff that collected in them we called “gnrr.”
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