A few weeks ago H and I were in the garage organizing the last stray bits of home goods from our move to London when we discovered a few things in boxes had been soaking in water. I pulled out a decorative pillow that was once in my daughter’s bedroom and discovered it was moldy and discolored. The drip from the roof was obviously a leak.

I unzipped the pillow cover and threw it on the top of one of the piles of laundry already in progress. And then I decided we should try and save the pillow too.

A few minutes later, I looked through the glass window on the washing machine and noticed a million tiny white feathers spinning in a cyclone.

Think about that for a minute.

Yeah, it’s been a month and we’re still finding feathers in random places.

We decided to use the vacuum cleaner to suck feathers out of the drum which is a good idea if the feathers are dry. Mostly dry isn’t the same as all the way dry when it comes to the smell in your vacuum canister, in case you were wondering.

Wet feathers smell like dirty socks – a year’s worth of your teenage son’s socks piled in a closet that hasn’t been opened in a long time. There ya go.

If you wash, well anything, with a feather pillow that rips open, you may just have to resolve yourself to throwing said items in the rubbish. Or spend hours pulling each embedded piece of fluff out of microfiber.

Seriously, who has time for that?

Last week, as Murielle and I sat in the dining room, a white feather drifted across the wood floor and stopped underneath the table. I told her about the pillow and my attempt to save it; how my good intentions resulted in a month long upheaval in our laundry rhythms.

She giggled.

For a solid minute.

And then I laughed too.

Good intentions come from a loving heart that considers others first. Assumptions are based on projections that may or may not be true.

Between your good intentions and assumptions is the place where God is waiting for you to consider Him and what is true.

Sabbath is that place. In rest, we spare ourselves from making a mess of things and remember He redeems.

As we approach the third week of Advent, may God remind you that no matter how big the mess, how difficult the mishap, He is coming.

He restores and makes all things new.

Happy Sabbath Friends!

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