Vacuuming is Man Work!

What many of you might not know about me is that in my early 20's I took a 2nd job cleaning buildings at night. It pulled me away from some negative influences and some things I would normally be doing at night. I used to clean this entire office building every night. The Lord was working in my life and the job gave me solitude to pray and think while I worked away the night. 

I also worked for the WWE wrestlers Sting and Lex Luger cleaning their Main Event Fitness gyms at night. I was cleaning a gym when I felt the Lord was leading me to attend Bible College. But all that is another story. This is a much more serious post. 

Working as a janitor is where I learned how to efficiently wield a vacuum cleaner and be a man. The vacuum cleaner is really piece of machinery in disguise. Machinery should be measured in horsepower. Anything with a horsepower rating is okay for any man to use. Some vacuum cleaners have been liberated from from the appliance category. Those that have carry the moniker of Shop Vac and clearly have a hoursepower rating stickered on every one.

However, in an effort to feminize vacuum cleaners, Horsepower has been removed from most vacuum marketing, but the fact remains it is handheld and has a motor and thus qualifies as a power tool, not an appliance. Ladies, don't let today's Mad Men marketing people put vacuuming on you.

Appliances definitely fall into a different category unless you are Tim the Tool Man and can get away with turbocharging them. 

For you younger men that have yet to buy your family a real vacuum like a Dyson, I'll remind you of this scripture from 1 Tim 5:8 "But if anyone does not provide for his own, that is his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever." Come on. It's 2020, almost 2021. Enough is enough.(Sidebar - Never, Never, Never buy your wife a vacuum. Period. For Any reason, whatsoever. Even if she asks for one. Get her a bracelet and earrings. Buy the vacuum for yourself. See Blog Post Title.) 

I'm not saying go out and spend a grandino on an Electrolux or a Kirby. If you can't afford a Miele then you at least owe it to your family to have a Dyson. I currently have a DC25 but now that we have a dog, I'm looking to upgrade to the Dyson Cinetic Big Ball Animal + Allergy. 

For mental sanity, forget about what you just sucked up. The cost is nothing compared to the satisfaction of a job well done. 

When you see that special miniature clear, red, roundish Lego part, the one with the special purple tip that you know only fits the $50 Zurg Lego kit, you gotta let it go and just suck it up. 

First of all, your kids don't even know its missing. Second, you don't have time to pick it up and find its proper place. Third, the problem with kids today is pre-configured logo sets. Fourthly, those kids should not have left it there in the first place making more work for you.

Warning! Dad tirade here. In my day, had I been inclined to build a Zurg, he would have been multi-colored, with points (because there were no rounded Legos) and I would have built him out of the generic 250 Lego set that I had, using my imagination and not some step by step instruction manual. These days kids aren't taught to think for themselves. They are given a formula, a set of instructions, a set way to do things and they are expected and graded based on how well they follow the given procedure and come up with the expected answer rather than being taught how to look at a problem and come up with a solution. Don't misunderstand my sentiment. There is right and wrong and kids should be told when they have failed to answer correctly. 2+2=4. Not 5. 5 is wrong. My point is that in order to arrive at 4 we can say 1+1+1+1=4 or 2.5+1.5=4. So suck that special Lego part up and in the unlikely event that your kids complain the next time they go to build Zurg, tell them to improvise. (And to all of you parents with truly Type-A kids, their Lego parts wouldn't be on the floor so this doesn't really pertain to you anyway.)

All that to say in a very roundabout way is if you find yourself in a humble situation that you would not like to be in for the rest of your life, make the most of it and know that God is in control. Look for ways to do your best and honor him. Look for His leading. Read your Bible and give the Holy Spirit time to work on your mind by washing your mind with scripture.

Sometimes He just wants you to pull away from others, or develop something new in you, or teach you something or change your course. 

You are not forgotten! 

Joseph was a slave, working in Potiphar's house before he went to prison, before he became #2 in power in Egypt.

"Gen 39:20b-21a But while Joseph was there in the prison, the Lord was with him"

Gen 41:41 So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt."

My life looks much different now than it did almost thirty years ago. But it was there that the Lord started me down a different path and I would not disparage the humble beginnings and the hard work I got to do. Praise be to God.