I always get a kick out of folks who say that the Church shouldn’t be allowed to tell them what to do in the bedroom. I always wonder what rooms in their home do they allow the Church to tell them what to do?
And if they’re looking for a room to start obeying the Church, my advice to them would be to start with the kitchen. Serving others is the best way to keep yourself and the Church in line. My kids want to eat three times a day. Three. Can you believe it? When I’m done cleaning up their mess from breakfast I have to start lunch. Honest to goodness, my son yesterday was still chewing his last bite of lunch when he asked me what was for dinner. I nearly beat him with my spatula. But I didn’t. That has to be points for heaven, right?
The laundry room. I consider the laundry room the place I go in the house to free souls from Purgatory. I can’t stand doing laundry. It’s not so much the throwing it from the washer into the dryer. It’s the folding and seeing things in the laundry pile that I absolutely know for a fact that none of my kids wore. The other day I pulled something out of the hamper that was still folded from when I washed it last week. Keeping my calm that day, I believe, made me quite the hero in Purgatory that day.
Now, if you’re feeling good and holy then you can move up to the television room. When you’re watching television think to yourself if you’d be watching what was on television if Jesus was kicking up his dogs on the couch with you. That’s a high bar, I know. But if it fails then maybe you shouldn’t be watching it. So if you allow God to dictate what you do in your television room, you might soon be ready for the bedroom.
So if you make breakfast for hungry children, tidy up after them because when they eat they leave more mess than a woodchipper, clean their laundry, make lunch, clean up after lunch, watch a little good television like EWTN while you’re folding laundry, put away the laundry, make dinner, clean up after dinner, run out after dinner to get more food in as well as laundry detergent for the morning so you can do it all over again, well by the time that’s all done you’re too tired to do anything in the bedroom anyway so you don’t have to worry too much.
