Tidy Teddy

Teddy is my loo. He's just been given a new name to signify a new era in his waste-disposing life. To tell you the truth, Teddy had a bit of a gunk problem. Although he'd been kept cosmetically and pathologically clean, he had a significant build-up of a strange brown gunk underneath the part where the seat is attached.
And so I decided, after over 17 years of gunk accumulation, that I was going to conquer the gunk. And conquer it I did.
It took a lot to remove the gunk at Teddy' behind; I first had to take the black seat off (an exercise in itself as one of the bolts was jammed), and then use a strange concoction of all the cleaning products I could find to try to loosen the gunk's grip on the porcelain's posterior. In the end, I believe it was Mr Muscle and a good deal of elbow grease that did it.
After scraping the strange gunk off, I then had a very messy floor to deal with. After that, I had to scrape yet more gunk off the black seat - I found this easier to do by soaking it in the bath and then scrubbing with all the energy I had left.
By this time, I'd been going about three hours. But transforming a toilet this dramatically is an excellent way to impress your mother. So, it was worth it.
And just look at Teddy now!

I bet you're expecting that I'll come up with some deep and meaningful life lesson from this experience. Well, I did :). I was thinking that Teddy is just like a person's heart. With years of no attention, Teddy got the most amazing gunk build-up I've ever seen. In the same way, if a person is not continually growing in character, and dealing with the things in their life that are not healthy (such as unforgiveness, bitterness, pride), they quickly build up a kind of spiritual 'gunk', that is really difficult to deal with if it's been left a long time. This is why I try to work on my character every day, so that each day I'm being refined and improved, instead of leaving heart problems unresolved, which are going to take a lot of intensive work to correct.
How do I work on my character every day? I've found an incredible resource in the Bible. The Bible has so much in it about how to become a better person. I also pray and ask God to show me the areas of my life that need improving. He always does show me, and I commit to working on those things with His help until they improve. Give it a try - and everyone around you will notice you being transformed.