Violet Voices

Ironing? Am I That Wrinkled?

Note from Meredith: This is Pattie’s first Violet Voices post! Welcome, Pattie! Thank you for sharing with us.

I hate to iron. It’s hard work, particularly because I tend to iron in almost as many wrinkles as I iron out. My husband is a minister, so of course he must have his dress clothing ironed.

One particular day several years ago, I was ironing a white shirt for him to wear to a difficult funeral. This funeral was going to be difficult because it was for a well-loved deacon’s wife in our new church. We hadn’t been able to spend much time with her, but she’d lived years beyond what the doctors predicted for her with her chronic heart condition. One morning, she didn’t wake up in her home, but in heaven. Can you imagine one morning waking up in the presence of Jesus? What a morning.

Anyway, back to the shirt. It’s a difficult one to iron because it’s 100% cotton and very easily wrinkled, but very sharp-looking once it’s finished. I was ironing away, when suddenly I realized the analogy: we are like 100% cotton shirts, and we sure get wrinkled, don’t we? Circumstances certainly work against us and wrinkle us all up. But our Heavenly Father irons our wrinkles, perhaps spraying us with some water or uses the steam to get the deep or difficult wrinkles smooth and beautiful again. When He’s finished, we look pretty sharp!

Unfortunately, I have to iron shirts again, don’t you? They get wrinkled and dirty, so we launder them and have to re-iron the same shirts. We also have the same wrinkles that reappear, don’t we? Just like my husband’s shirts get wrinkled in the same places each time (around the waist, at the elbows), we wrinkle in the same places (feeling sorry for ourselves, selfishness, attitudes that aren’t pleasing to the Lord, complacency, and the list goes on and on). I know I struggle consistently with some of the same sins, and feel sometimes like I will never learn the same lessons. Does the Lord get tired of ironing the same spots over and over? Do I feel the pressure of the heat and steam of the iron? Of course it isn’t comfortable. Just like the refiner’s fire, or the potter’s molding and firing, or even the washing machine (all analogies of the Christian life with which we’re familiar), the Lord’s working in our lives doesn’t always feel good. However, we rest assured that He who began a good work in us will perfect it till the day of Christ Jesus, right? Even if that means we have to be thumped, baked, steamed, pressed flat, and otherwise re-molded in Christ’s image, we still want Him to continue working in our lives.

I know there are times I don’t want to go through this ironing process. It hurts, and it doesn’t feel good to acknowledge all the wrinkles that I have in my life. But when the day comes that I wake up in the presence of Jesus, I want to be wrinkle-free.

For I am confident of this very thing,
That He who began a good work in you
Will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Philippians 1:6

The Ironing? Am I That Wrinkled? by Violet Voices, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Written By: Pattie
Posted under: Women's Voices .  Email This Post