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"Wrinkles Worth Keeping"When it comes to folding laundry which description would best suite you?: a.) Expert – as soon as the bell “dings” on the dryer, you stop what you’re doing, rush to the laundry room and fold - preventing possible wrinkles, occasionally burning your fingers on the still hot clothes. b.) Amateur - you get around the emptying the dryer when there’s a free minute in the day. Emptying doesn’t necessarily mean folding however, it could also refer to dumping the laundry on the bed to be folded some time in the near future (2-3 days.) c.) Novice – most of the time, you skip the folding step altogether and figure it is just as easy for people to dig through laundry basket as it is to pull something out of their drawer. Last time you put matched socks in your husband’s bureau it threw him for a loop. I have a couple of sisters-in-law that are “Expert” folders. I wish I was like them. I admit, I fit better in somewhere between “Amateur” and “Novice.” After letting my clothes sit in clumps for a couple days, I end up doing a lot of ironing to get the wrinkles out. I definitely like my clothes pressed – I don’t like wrinkles. Turns out, neither did Tim’s grandma. At 90 years old, in her make-up bag, was a bottle of Ultra-lift Anti-aging wrinkle cream. Now that is a woman who wasn’t going to give in easily, no sir. She was going to fight wrinkles to the end. But what if wrinkles, instead of representing something negative, were a symbol for something positive? What if we looked at them differently? For example, let’s say you see a mom and her children at the grocery store – all of them wearing wrinkled clothes. We could make the assumption that that mother is definitely a folding novice and could use a little expert advice. For Heaven’s sake – doesn’t she care about what they look like in public? Or, if we were to look at wrinkles a little differently, we could assume that she spends so much time with her kids – reading, doing puzzles, baking cookies, talking – that she just plain ran out of time for ironing this week. What a great mom! Here’s another one…Let’s pretend (although I’m not sure this will be much of a stretch for any of us to imagine) we look at ourselves in the mirror one morning. Nice and close, so we can see it all. We notice wrinkles. More and more wrinkles and we think, “Why can’t we just stay young? Why do little tiny roadways have to be carved in our face each year? It is only a matter of time before my lipstick starts seeping outside the lines. Ugh!” Or, wrinkles could stand for something a little more meaningful – years of experience, wisdom gained through life’s events, smile lines… Some wrinkles represent growth in marriage. Some mean you’ve raised beautiful children. Maybe you have a wrinkle or two from facing a trial head-on and not giving up. I will probably have to continue ironing out the wrinkles in my clothes, and in life, but as far as the ones that show up on my face – I think I’ll hang on to them and be happy about it. They mean I’ve learned something. They mean I’ve lived and experienced and loved and smiled. Some wrinkles really are worth keeping. |  |
