"In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes." That’s what Benjamin Franklin famously said in a 1789 letter. Something tells me that had he been responsible for running the household, he would have added laundry to the list. Because, in our house at least, there’s always laundry. And I’m pretty sure it’s the same in the homes of every family I know. It starts when the kids are babies, spitting up and drooling and making unspeakable messes on their clothes several times a day. As they grow, there is spilled juice, chocolate ice cream, mud and grass and blood. Not too much blood, one hopes. The color of the dirt in baseball diamonds gets ground into socks and the knees of pants and never leaves. White school uniform shirts never come clean by the time the second semester starts. Now, with a teenage hockey player, there have been laundry loads that consist of 16 T-shirts liberated from his bag. Those loads usually need to be washed twice. At least. Fortunately, Frank does those loads himself. Even more fortunately, for me, my husband took over primary responsibility when we got married and still does the lion’s share of it. Not that I won’t throw in a load when it’s sitting there and I have time. And it’s always sitting there. But that’s what so much of life is: Getting up and doing the work that needs to be done, over and over and over again. It’s making beds and washing dishes and feeding the kids and going to work and doing it again tomorrow. On a spiritual level, it’s working toward conversion every day. It’s praying and feeling close to God, and praying and feeling distant; it’s examining your conscience and identifying the ways you went wrong (or did wrong) and resolving to do better. It’s going to confession and receiving absolution, and then having to do it again and again. Because we are a fallen people, and even the most saintly fall short time and time again. Confession isn’t a "get out of jail free" card; it’s an opportunity to try again. And all of us have to do laundry, day after day and week after week, because even the grown-ups among us who no longer play in the mud get our clothes dirty. So do we grownups who still like to dig in the dirt. In the book of Revelation, the evangelist writes about those who wear white robes. They are the ones, the narrator says, whose "robes are washed in the blood of the Lamb." That’s the goal. That’s when we get to stop doing our laundry.