transformed
It requires a good washing to ready the planks. From inside, where I scrub unseen demons from our stainless steel sink, rubbing at the curves, pressing down with my fingers, I hear the steady pounding of water. I hear the rapid smack against the windows, the siding, the beams. The word wash feels too soft, sliding off my fingers the way that water slings down between the grooves in the floor, dripping through the screen and into the dirt beneath, carrying with it the grime we see and the callouses we don’t. The truth is that washing strips away the outermost stubborn layer, no matter its object—fiber, surfaces, skin, souls. If we skip this step, our transformative efforts might fail to make any lasting difference. But the washed thing–the consecrated one–begins a new life.
I rinse the sink, squeezing water out of an old rag, a soft thing I used to use for bathing babies, now consigned to sink duty. My fingers and their urgent pressure have worn the cloth thin in certain places, creating rough dots. I like the scars; they tell our story. This delicate bit of cloth has survived years, everything from gurgling to groans to singing; it feels good in my hands.
I peek out on the porch, where the pressure washer rumbles and water beats against the floor boards. The planks, once a warm terracotta brown, look blond in places, worn down by the trod of our feet and the scrape of our chairs, by years of our rocking and talking and living. At the hardware store where we bought the stain that will follow all this washing, the clerk warned us that we’ll still see evidence of history just below the fresh gloss. “The old stain will make it darker in some places; you might be able to see the blemishes in the wood,” he cautioned, hefting the gallon cans onto the counter in front of us. I nodded, told him it would be okay, but what I felt was actually a surge of enthusiasm, a swell of hope, over the idea that our floor would look both new and reclaimed. I feel affinity for re-purposed objects because I myself live a reclaimed life.
I’m washed, too, and I don’t just mean the day I gave my life to Christ and the preacher in our little Lowcountry church dipped my body under the baptismal water. The Word washes me, dividing soul and spirit, and the Spirit renews me day by day. That word–wash–still feels too soft.
The young man we hired to pressure wash the porch—let’s call him Troy, wears his cap backwards on his head, calls Kevin “man” every time he talks. When he sees me at the window, he lifts a hand to wave, still guiding the washing with the other. I am short-sighted and half blind; if I had met Troy under other circumstances, I would not have appointed him to this kind of careful work. I wonder how he came by the job; how he learned the skill required to wash something this way without destroying it. You ask me why, and it’s a dozen awkward, superficial things, the same kinds of things which make me an odd choice too for holy work. But God chooses the foolish things to shame the wise; the weak things to shame the strong, and so He chose me–He chose you–to carry the rescuing Spirit in these bodies. I lift a hand and wave back, offering Troy a welcoming smile. He smiles, gives me a businesslike nod, then returns to the washing. The water slides in tiny waves over the floor; it drips through the screen.
After Troy finishes, we’ll wait three days before we paint. If anything, things will look worse–naked, upbraided, empty and scarred–before we begin the process that leads to renewal. But then, it’d be a mistake to think we’d finished with the washing. No, that’s only just the beginning. It’s washed, sanctified, justified; not just washed. In fact, the entire project will consume at least a week of intentional work, of new absorbed deep and repetitively reapplied; of our bodies yielding, stretched, bent, and ultimately sore. For a soul, such a thing takes a lifetime. But at the end of it all, we’ll have something beautiful.
