On fitted sheets and God.

So you know how you click over to the place of Pinterest and there are ten-thousand ever-loving re-pins of the secret to folding a fitted sheet?  I was folding laundry today during my weekly folding afternoon and I pulled a few sheets from the basket, because I have a kid who doesn’t wear diapers anymore, not because I wash all the sheets every week.  I certainly do not.

And every time I take a fitted sheet in my hand, I pause and it makes me think about the caption of that pin, “FINALLY, the secret to properly folding a fitted sheet!  All your problems have now been solved. There is nothing to difficult for you now that you can fold a fitted sheet.  You have arrived.”  It probably says that, I don’t know, I scroll down as quickly as I can.  

I don’t want to know how to fold a freaking fitted sheet. ever. 

Seriously.

The thing is… the internet is obsessed with having a linen closet ready to be inspected by the Queen of England.  Has she showed up to any of your places, because she’s not been here.  And what kind of guest arrives and immediately asks to tour the linen closet? I mean, I have nothing against perfectly symmetrical and poetic linen closets (well maybe I do), but this post isn’t really about such things. (What I really want to do is mess it up a bit, to grace your life with a bit of chaos as my best friend in high school called it.) You see, she had a very classic style, nothing bold or dramatic or too bright.  Her closet was a monochromatic shrine to navy blue and I loved her for it.  But then one day after years of influence, she bought a bright pink one shoulder tank on her own and it was one of my proudest moments in life. 

Back to fitted sheets.

Before the madness of the pinterest, it was one of the great mysteries that people just accepted, like no one really knew how to fold them, but they gave it their best try and called it a day and no one lost any sleep at night.  We were all together in a peaceful state of poorly folded sheets. Those were the days.

The reason I don’t ever want to follow the step by step how-to-fold tutorial is because of God.  That’s right. God.  I’m a girl who likes a little mystery in life.  I like to know that there is this great force in charge of knowing all the answers and giving me the ones I need.  Knowing all the answers would be an incredibly taxing and heavy job.  It keeps me small, in the good way. Like, it’s my job to clean and use the sheets and take care of them and do the best I can with the sheets I’ve been given, turning them into something beautiful, but that’s all.

However, sometimes I freak out and I’m all, I WILL FOLD THIS SHEET PERFECTLY.  I WILL SOLVE ALL THE PROBLEMS AND HAVE ALL THE ANSWERS.  I WILL MAKE MY KID’S SANDWICHES LOOK LIKE MATER. (No I will not. My kid  barely eats his sandwiches, why would I waste my time doing that?)  And I get lost in a frenzied state of angst because basically what I’m trying do is live my life in the way that someone else told me I must, in a way that would make Martha and the Queen so proud. That’s when things turn into a mess, because I forget that I’m small and I forget that I don’t want all the answers. I try to help God do his job, which he does very well and that is always a bad idea.

Basically, am I saying that the how-to-fold-a-fitted-sheet-tutorial is the same as the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden?

Maybe. Probably.

And that why fitted sheets remind me of God.