singing the blues

This morning in church our pastor told us about a woman he came across in Aruba. She works at the resort where he and his wife were vacationing. For 8 hours a day she mops the floors of the two lobbies and the hallway that connects them. And while she does this seemingly mundane, unimportant task, she sings hymns. She has a beautiful soprano singing voice and she sings the entire time that she is mopping. She sings while people walk over her freshly mopped floors, leaving shoe prints and smudges behind. My pastor said that she has made that hallway and those two lobbies into her cathedral.
And it made me stop and think about my attitude when I am doing dishes, mopping the floor and scrubbing toilets. Most days I just accept those types of tasks as an inevitable part of life, something that needs to be done.I'm not necessarily grumbling and complaining about them, but I'm certainly not signing hymns while I work. I often find myself wondering why I even bother because my kids are just going to mess it up again anyway. Just last week I cleaned my house so that I could host card club and the next evening it looked like I had done nothing at all. The dining room floor was dirty. Toys were strewn around the living room. Dishes were sitting in the sink. And I was so frustrated. My hard work seemed to be so pointless.
So there is absolutely no way I would be singing hymns as people walked across my floor. I would be yelling at them and grumbling and complaining. I might even make a rude gesture behind their back. I know, shocking. And I want to end my post with something super encouraging about how I'm a work in progress and that someday I, too, will sing gospel songs while I scrub the floor. And maybe that will happen. But for now I'm just going to be truthful and acknowledge that sometimes I have a sucky attitude and let that be enough.