Summer break began with a blast of heat that made for perfect long days in the pool. The girls enthusiastically zipped through pages of their new summer workbooks and sat reading in the hammock for the fun of it (and the minutes toward prizes at the library). We stayed up late for family movie nights and missed a couple naps because it was just too nice to come inside.

But a week later, when the threat of rain and the sniffles of a summer cold kept us home, I felt the haze of boredom hanging over their heads. The household chores I’d put off in favor of outdoor fun shouted for my attention and the girls’ requests for me to join their games or find something new for them to do called nearly as loudly.

By five o’clock I found myself standing over a sink full of suds and dishes (again), with the kitchen table nearly indistinguishable beneath an assortment of craft supplies and half-completed art projects. A mountain of towels and sheets occupied the couch, washed and dried but still unfolded. Candy Land cards and collectible food-shaped erasers scattered across the family room floor.

It was one of those days where everything seemed to get started and nothing seemed to get finished.

The work of keeping a home can feel repetitive. The same dishes need to be washed, the same clothes folded, the same toys and crafts put away. There’s rarely a job that I complete once and say, “that’s done!” Almost everything I finish today will need to be done again tomorrow or the next week. But even the mundane finds meaning when I put it in perspective with these words from Colossians 3:23:

Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord rather than for men…

Everything I do, even if it’s the same exact thing I did the day before and will do again tomorrow, is work that I do for the Lord. And that makes it meaningful. It doesn’t always make it easy, but when I fix my eyes on God and allow Him to realign my heart, He brings purpose to all that I do.

There are dishes stacked on the counter again. There’s a new basket full of laundry to wash. But I choose to see them for what they are: an opportunity to serve and honor God in whatever I do. Meaning in the mundane.