Pressing Matters

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As part of American Family Radio’s 35th-anniversary celebration, the network recently asked its on-air hosts to complete a survey. One question asked me to share something listeners might be surprised to learn about me.

My answer: I enjoy ironing.

Now, before you summon men in white coats with large butterfly nets, let me ‘splain.

My mother taught all of us to iron. My father was a military man who expected us never to leave the house wrinkled or rumpled. He certainly never did.

For years, ironing was practical. Dry-cleaning bills add up, and we now live more than fifty miles from a dry cleaner.

But over time, the chore became something more.

For four decades, I’ve watched my wife suffer from extreme chronic pain and endure scores of operations and more months in hospital rooms than I care to count. During those stays, I noticed something small but measurable: She rested better when the bed had fresh linens. Clean, tightly drawn sheets and a fresh pillowcase did not relieve her pain or repair her body. But they settled her. They softened the edges of a brutal experience.

Hospital staffs necessarily focus on large things: medications, procedures, vital signs, and lab results. Fresh linens can slide down the list. Over hospital stays dating back to the Reagan administration, I learned where to find the clean linens and helped myself. If a sheet touched the floor or a pillowcase looked tired, I replaced it and put the used linens in the nylon laundry bag found in every room.

The improvement was never dramatic. Fresh sheets did not erase her pain, but her body relaxed and her breathing settled. In a room governed by suffering, even modest comfort deserved attention.

One day at home, I saw the sheets in the basket beside the ironing board and thought, “Why not?”

By the way, there’s a lot of laundry involved in caregiving. Just saying.

So I ironed her pillowcases and prayed over them. Then I tackled the sheets, including the fitted ones, which should qualify as an advanced degree. I started pressing her nightgowns and hanging them where she could reach them from her wheelchair. I ironed her blouses so they were smooth and ready to wear.

With a Bluetooth earpiece, I return listeners’ calls, conduct media interviews, take audio courses, and talk theology with pastors who tutor me—all while ironing. Laundry does not steal time from my work; it helps me focus.

These things do not solve the larger problem. I cannot take away Gracie’s pain, reverse the damage done to her body, or make her legs grow back.

But I can make the bed.

Caregivers live among things we cannot control, repair, or explain. Ironing helps me direct some of that tension toward something useful and within reach. When I cannot bring order to the crisis, I can bring order to the linen closet. A pressed pillowcase will not cure chronic pain, but it may help someone rest while enduring it.

But Scripture presses the matter further.

At the Transfiguration, Christ’s clothes became “shining, exceedingly white, like snow, such as no launderer on earth can whiten them” (Mark 9:3). Paul writes that Christ will present the church to Himself as “a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing” (Ephesians 5:27).

Evidently, God likes clean laundry.

But the spotless bride will not stand before Christ because she finally scrubbed away every stain and pressed out every wrinkle herself. She will stand there because Christ loved her and gave Himself for her. He does what no launderer on earth can do. He cleanses His people and clothes them in His righteousness: a righteousness they did not produce.

For those of us facing stains we cannot remove and damage we cannot undo, that is no small promise.

Every piece of laundry I press reminds me of that greater work. Heat and pressure smooth the fabric beneath my hands. Yet even the crispest sheet will be wrinkled again. The pillowcase will be soiled. The hamper will fill. By next week, I will repeat the work.

Christ’s cleansing does not fail. His atoning work does not need repeating.

One day, there will be no nylon bags filled with dirty hospital linens carrying the evidence of another person’s suffering. There will be no hospitals. The redeemed will stand clothed in white, in the brilliant righteousness of Christ. Nothing will stain it. Nothing will wrinkle it.

Until then, suffering remains, and so does laundry. Each time I unfold that ironing board, I am reminded that the small relief I can offer points beyond itself to the complete redemption Christ has promised.

One day, the ironing board will be put away forever.

Until then, I ...with a nod to the Apostle Paul ... press on.

And before you ask, I only iron for Gracie.

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