It is crazy how something so ordinary and everyday as a washing machine can make you feel desperate and like your life is spinning out of control. Like what were you even thinking when you took on the responsibility of parenting? You can’t keep up with the laundry or the dishes or even pretend to have your life together, and then a major appliance breaks and everything piles up on you. Not just the clothes and the towels and the bed sheets and blankets, but the guilt and the actual hard truth that sometimes you can’t provide the things your family needs. There is no money in the bank for another washing machine. Not even the used one you can get with a 30-day warranty at the second-hand store down the road.
This was our life last week. Desperate. And the catalyst for our desperation was the final death of our old, beat-up washing machine.
It is a humbling fact, but true: we did not have the money for another machine. I know, I know. A washing machine is a luxury. I started telling myself that yes, I can wash clothes by hand for our family of ten until we are able to get it together. But down for almost 24 hours, the laundry was already mounting up like Everest. We were praying and Randy was pacing the bedroom, saying all manner of desperate things, feeling like a failure as a husband and a father, wringing his hands and racking his brain. The only resource left to us was faith, and I was trying my best to access it. Scribbling urgent prayers in my journal, I was remembering times like this where God stepped in to our secret need and provided for our family. The tension in the room was palpable. The prayers were desperate.
My phone dinged. It was a text from a friend. She asked, with the most gentle urging, if there was anything we needed. She wanted to know what was on our “wish list.” Of course, the only thing I was wishing I had at that moment was a working washing machine, but of course I couldn’t say that. I told her I loved her and didn’t know what to say. She wrote back and urged me to tell her “the truth” and whatever was truly on my heart. She said she was a safe place and that I could tell her our real needs. God knew this language was exactly what I needed to hear. After a few moments, and seeing that this very well may be the answer to our prayer, I texted that Randy was about to go price a used washing machine down the road and if she wanted to contribute any amount to that, it would be a huge blessing and help to us.
There was an hour or so where she didn’t write back and I felt an even greater despair that I had asked too much, or that I shouldn’t have expected this was how God was going to provide for us. That I had burdened someone else with my own needs and inability to get my life under control.
And then the phone dinged again. She wrote and said that she and her family wanted to bless us with a new washing machine. She met us that evening at Lowe’s and said to pick out the machine that was best for our family. Not to look at the dollar sign, but to listen for Jesus. Then practically laughing, she left us with her credit card. While we were standing there, in shock, looking at new machines, large-capacity with 5-year warranties, laughing through tears, she texted and said to go ahead and get a matching dryer too.
I love the whir of the washing machine. I say this a week later, in a quiet house, with tears welling up in my eyes. This sound is a hymn of God’s faithfulness to me. He hears our prayers. He cares about the needs of these children. Sometimes, he wants to give us so much more than the junk we can almost afford on our own. I will never complain about the laundry again. From now on, the daily ritual will be a part of my worship to God. I will wash these clothes with joy and a song in my heart.
Just as the old washing machine had been the catalyst for some despair, this new washing machine has been the catalyst for so much amazing, hopeful change in our home. For four years, we have prayed over and made plan-after-failed plan to knock down our kitchen/laundry room wall (also known as the Wall of Jericho). The problem has always been how to hide our hideous washing machine and dryer and where to put our mountain of laundry.
I will never hide these beautiful machines! They are a symbol of God’s goodness to me. The gentle hum of their voices speaks of his tender mercies, new every morning. They were delivered on Wednesday, and the next day, as if my husband heard the sound of the trumpet call, he was moved to battle and the Wall of Jericho came down in a day.
This means that our 8-ft table now actually fits in our kitchen/dining space. (I am no longer bumping my growing belly into the fridge when I try to squeeze past my daughter’s chair.) It also means I have room for a second table against the back corner wall. Can you even grasp the meaning of this blessed second table?!?! It means art can stay out. I no longer have to say, “Clean that up, it’s time to eat” three times a day. (Life-changing…) Also, having the laundry machines in plain sight reminds me to actually *do* my laundry. And I am aware that if I change out loads after every meal, our family of ten can actually keep up.
Imagine me, just this afternoon, saying, “Go put on some leggings.” To which my daughter replied, “I don’t know if there are any clean ones.” And I responded, “They are all clean and in your drawers.” Because I actually know this to be true.
Desperation comes in many forms. I think one thing that having eight (soon-to-be-nine) children has taught me over and over is I can’t do this. Whatever illusion I once had of being in control, of having enough money, time, energy, creativity, vision, strength, goodness, wisdom, determination, ability,(fill-in-the-blank) has mostly worn away. And when I see myself, I see someone who desperately needs God’s help. And I see his faithfulness etched into every line of my life. He is pleased to show himself strong in my weakness.
It hits me tenderly that this is actually the gospel story. God came down and reached into our desperation. He met us in the places where everything we had was not enough. We could not meet our own needs. We were buried beneath our mounting guilt and the hard truth that we can’t actually save ourselves. But He brought light into our darkness. Peace to our despair. He sings songs of deliverance over us.
And so I share this story in hopes that if you are in a moment of desperation, you will turn to the God who is able to do more than we can even think or imagine. That you will ask him for help. He hears. He cares. He is really there.
He can move mountains. A wall can come down in a day. He can turn the never-ending tasks you have dreaded for decades into sacred rhythms, touch-points of his love and mercy. He can sing his love over you any way He wants.
I hear his love song in the sound of the washing machine.
Sending love to all of you. Thank you for being here, for bearing witness to my life, for listening to my stories. I pray that God will reach down into your desperate places this week and remind you that He is there. I want to leave you with a set of songs that my husband, Randy, wrote and his story of God reaching down into his despair. I pray that someone will find hope in these words and songs.
(Randy’s words:) When I was 22 I tried to take my own life. I was living in Nashville, TN and I was in a very dark place mentally, spiritually, (and chemically) and I couldn’t see a way out of the cycle of despair in which I had landed myself. One day, after years of recurring hallucinations-waking nightmares, more terrifying for the fact that they were now occurring even when I wasn’t high on drugs, I felt something snap in me and I lost it. I was at someone’s house and I took a kitchen knife, quietly locked myself in the bathroom, and standing in the tub I found a pulse under my ribs and pushed the knife in. After my suicide attempt I passed out and after waking some time later and realizing I hadn’t succeeded I decided instead of stabbing myself deeper I would tell someone and look for help. A friend drove me to the hospital and after being treated I was put in the hospital mental ward. My friend called my parents without me knowing it. My mom and brother Tommy came and got me and brought me back to Athens, GA. For 2 more years I struggled with extreme mood swings and, though depressed, I found some solace playing music again in some local bands in the Gainesville, GA area. Still, I harboured suicidal thoughts even to the point of carrying a razor blade in my wallet. After months of living on people’s couches, mooching food and drugs and quickly losing my mind again, I suffered another breakdown worse than before. I called my mom again and she brought me home and that night took me to a church service. I went to the front and asked people to pray for me. As they surrounded me with prayer I cried out to Jesus Christ for help. He answered. I can’t explain it but He is really there. I had prayed many times before but this time was different. God was waiting for me to really mean it. Tears. Repentance. Confession. Worship. Surrender. I was being born again. The despair that had been feeding on me like a vampire could no longer get its teeth in me. I was alive for the first time. Here I am 30 years later and I can hardly believe how I almost robbed myself of the life I now have with Mackenzie and the lives of our 7 precious children who wouldn’t be here if I had given up. I sat down at the piano the other day and wrote 2 songs about it. Don’t give up, friends. If you find yourself thinking about suicide, please don’t do it. There is another way out. I am living proof.
Sending love, and light, and hope.
Mackenzie
What a tender and bold thing for your husband to share that story.
I loved reading this. We have had so many moments like this too! Including a friend of a friend I barely knew who sent us a check for a washing machine one year. I'm again feeling very humbled by our community's generosity in our current circumstances. Every time I worry, He provides.