Do you like Scotty McCreery, this year’s American Idol winner? My daughter, Laura, is a huge fan. This weekend we purchased his debut CD, Clear as Day. He has a lot of cute songs on it, but the one I found myself drawn to is entitled “Dirty Dishes.” Now before you start laughing, you have to read the lyrics.

Mama hollers “Supper time,
And don’t make me tell you twice
Wash your hands and wipe your face.
The table’s no place for your toys,
And try to use your inside voice,
Don’t dig in ’til we say Grace.”
So we put down our forks and bowed our heads
And then she prayed the strangest prayer ever said:

I wanna thank you Lord,
For noisy children and slamming doors,
And clothes scattered all over the floor,
My husband workin’ all the time,
Draggin’ in dead tired at night,
My never ending messy kitchen
And dirty dishes.”

We all got real still and quiet,
And daddy asked “Honey, you alright?”
She said, “Dear, ain’t nothing wrong,
Noisy kids are happy kids,
And slamming doors just means we live,
In a warm and loving home,
Your long hours and those dishes in the sink,
Means a job and enough to eat.

So I’m gonna thank You Lord,
For noisy children and slamming doors,
And clothes scattered all over the floor,
My husband workin’ all the time,
Draggin’ in dead tired at night,
My never ending messy kitchen

For my little busy bees
Beggin’ mama, mama can you please?
Always wantin’ me to call their name
Loads of laundry pilin’ up
Their arms cushed into the (?)
In those little sticky kisses
And dirty dishes,
And dirty dishes…

The premise of the song is to thank God for what you have and see the beauty of all things. God is the creator of all things [Ecclesiastes 11:5]. He works all things together for good, even things that may be tiring, cumbersome at times, or even repetitive [Romans 8:28]. We can choose to look at the bad in our circumstances or we can choose to look for the God. This song looks at God in the midst of the chaos of the life of a housewife.
Your chaos may not come in the form of piled up laundry and dirty dishes. Maybe your chaos is files stacked high, phone calls to make, trips to take and deals to make, but no matter what it is made up of, you can find God in the midst of it if you look for Him [Deuteronomy 4:29, Proverbs 8:17 and Jeremiah 29:13].
Pause for a moment today and ask the Lord to give you a new perspective on your circumstances. Ask Him to reveal His purposes in what you’re going through. You might just find you have your own lyrics to write.