Being Prepared..not really my strong point

So we have had a crazy July. People staying with us, us travelling every weekend plus church things and kid activities. I have a list of chores and "to do's" every day, but the one that I have been putting off is cleaning my shower and it is nasty.  It is in the master bedroom in the far corner of the house and nobody goes in there much, so each weekend when we are packing up to go somewhere I think," Oh, I'll just do that Monday."

Well, this weekend we went to western NC to visit Greg's parents and then we brought his grandmother, Mammy, back with us for a few days. Before we left, I made sure the guest bedroom and the main bathroom were pristine ( well, as clean as you can get with three kids and two dogs). My bathroom, same story. I decided to put that at the top of my list for this coming week.

We get home tonight and Mammy gets to see our house and mentioned to Greg that she would really like to take a shower, but doesn't see how she can climb over the bathtub in the bathroom , does the master bathroom have a walk in shower? Why, yes it does! It just happens to look like the before picture on a Tylex commercial!

So, I beg Greg for 20 min to stall and I run to the bathroom with the puny little cleaner that I have on hand. ( Another reason for my procrastination is I was out of the heavy duty scum cleaner) As I try my best to clean this bathroom, I  realize that getting it clean enough in 20 minutes with this wimpy dollar store cleaner is about as possible as me baking a 12 layer cake in that amount of time....Impossible.

Mammy would more than likely not say anything about the bathroom, but I know how clean she likes things and how the bathrooms in her house look. Not to mention, I wouldn't even let my own mother look in the shower stall for fear she would ground me for a week for my negligence.  As I scrubbed my little heart out, the Lord reminded me of how often I unfortunately go about His work with the same attitude and preparation.

Soooo, this is a busy month for us, but 2 reasons it's so busy is we are taking our church youth to teen camp and also we have VBS coming up. Two important events that I should be diligently praying for and asking God to work in young people's lives through. If I go into these weeks with very little prayer time and thought, I am going to feel a lot like I did tonight when someone I loved wanted to use my shower.  Ill prepared, off guard and scurrying to make it better.

I very much want camp and VBS to be a time that no matter what the enemy throws at us, we can walk right through it. I want to be mentally prepared to face difficulty, answer hard questions, impact young lives for eternity and have the patience needed for two long weeks. 

The Lord reminded me tonight with my crazy cleaning fit that I have 8 days until camp and now is the time to stock up on the heavy cleaner of His Word and put a little elbow grease into my prayer life. Just being on my to do list isn't enough...I have to actually do it!

That way maybe I won't get caught on my hands and knees at dark trying to do something that could have easily been taken care of earlier if I would have only given it some priority.