After coffee Margreet got up energetically, "Huib, it has done me so much good to struggle through those photo books, I now have energy for ten, as if a leaden burden has fallen off me. I'm going to wash the windows of the guesthouse."

Huib shot into laughter. "Bright housewife! Are you keeping an eye on yourself, though? Stop if you don't enjoy doing it anymore, okay?"

Margreet looked at him in surprise: "If I don't enjoy doing it anymore?"

"Yes, usually people only stop when they are way too tired, but you may stop if you don't enjoy doing it anymore. Doesn't matter to the guesthouse, but it does to you. Just think of it as training in feeling, feeling even deeper than you already do. And in being honest with yourself. What will it do to you if you stop because you don't enjoy it anymore, even though you're not done yet? Really, that could be surprising to a young lady who has always had to live in perfectionism and super-speed!"

Margreet nodded thoughtfully, "I think I understand a bit what you mean. I'll try to feel it out window by window. You'll hear from me later how I experienced!"

Huib pulled her against him for a moment: "Brave woman of mine! Everything you do now is part of your healing process, part of learning to feel and listen deeper. It can be tough, intense, but it will definitely do you good. And however it goes, I love you!" He ended with a kiss on her forehead. Margreet raised her face and answered his kiss with a kiss on his mouth.

.

Margreet grabbed the things she needed together, looked around the guest house and decided to start at the front. She stepped out of the front door and looked up: the bedroom windows she would do another time, she could clean them from the inside: open one window, and through it wash the other, and then the other way around. Handy, it must have been Erik's idea to place two windows next to each other that could both be opened.

Cheerfully she went to work on the front door and the windows around it. Then the other windows at the front.

She was almost done with it when she heard voices coming closer. She turned around and saw that the three couples of young guests were approaching. As they got closer, Theo and Renate, and Alan and Frida introduced themselves to her. Frida responded to her work, "You have lovely weather for washing the windows. Are you enjoying it a bit too?"

"Yes I do," Margreet replied, "I like it, a bit of water playing."

The guests laughed. "What about you? Walked around together?"

"Yes," Theo responded, "this morning we discovered that we have a common desire, that we want to learn to live from within. We shared our backgrounds with each other, and we just clicked. As if we were on a field trip together, so beautiful! Renate and I went to Huib this morning to ask him about a movie, and he offered to organize two movie nights in your house. Well, that was just what we needed!"

"Oh yeah, 'The Truman Show' and 'The Matrix'! He told me about. I haven't seen either movie yet, but Huib has, he was excited about it. I'm looking forward to see!"

Theo looked at her with a tilted head: "I have a confession to make, Margreet. When we arrived, I saw you working here and thought to myself... 'really, washing windows on Sunday?'... and immediately I realized that this is an imposed rule from the Bible and the church. Well, in the Bible it talks about not working on Sunday. But if you would ask people from the church, most of them would say that you are not allowed to wash windows on Sunday. It's not allowed! So it's a prohibition...in other words, if Renate or I feel the desire from within to go wash the windows on a Sunday, the church people are immediately in front of us with a waving finger to tell us that it's not allowed today."

Renate nodded, "For years I told myself that it was nice to have a day off every week, a day I didn't have to do anything. But I've often felt right through it all, that such a thing is wrenching, makes you feel uncomfortable. You want something, just like Theo says, but you're not allowed to."

Margreet nodded: "I don't know it from a religion or so, I didn't grow up with that, but I do know it in another form. On Sundays I also had to be considerate of our neighbors, who did go to church, to what they called a 'strict' church. What I know is that they kept strictly to the commandments and prohibitions. My mother wanted to take that into account, not give them any offence, so for that reason I wasn't allowed to do anything on Sunday that might disturb the neighbors. The joke was that I didn't know what would disturb them. Just go for a bike ride? Little did I know that even that was out of the question… But beyond that, rules that other people or systems impose on you don't make you free to do what you desire. It traps you, pushes you into a fit that you don't want to be in at all. And that distorts who you are. This is all still quite new to me, I was definitely not raised with it, just the opposite. But in the three weeks that I have been working and living here, my eyes have been opened and I long for more. So when I heard about these movie nights this morning, I was super happy about that.

And furthermore, this morning I looked at some of my childhood photos and consciously felt what it did to me, re-felt how I felt then. And now I experience the result as if a great burden has been taken off. The injury will still need to heal further, but I don't carry the mess around with me like that anymore. And what else is to come, I have no idea. We'll see in due course. In any case, I feel a burden lighter now! And that made me feel so happy and free, that I suddenly felt like washing the windows."

"Wow," Frida said, "and are you going to do all the windows around now?"

Margreet smiled, "I don't know yet. Huib suggested to feel again and again to see if I still enjoy it. Because of my situation with my parents I had become a perfectionist, a striver who wanted to do things faster and better than was possible. I always made high demands on myself, too high. And now with every window I feel whether I still enjoy it. Huib promised me that it would do something to me, no idea what, but it could be a big confrontation."

Rosanne laughed: "There is a chance of that, because they don't fit together at all, such a striver who is going to stop because she doesn't enjoy it anymore. But I can imagine that facing that confrontation will free you from that striving. Take his idea seriously!"

Cheerfully the group said goodbye and walked past the guesthouse into the garden.

Margreet picked up her things and went to the next window. The little talk had done her good, and the next window she definitely wanted to wash. So she continued, passing all the windows from the front. At the last window, however, she experienced that she didn't feel like it anymore, that she was starting to get a little tired.

At that moment the battle in her mind began...

That one window, if I do that now, the whole front will be finished, then I'll have finished that at least. That would feel good!

But Margreet, said another voice in her mind, if you don't feel like it anymore, you'd better stop, you promised. So if you go on with that last window you are not keeping your promise.

A third thought came over that: it's not about that promise, it's about what you feel, what you really want, what's important to you.

That third voice, it resembled what Huib had said. The second one didn't, it would mark her choice to do that one window after all as wrong and saddle her with a feeling of guilt. And the first, she recognized as the voice of the perfectionist.

Margreet decided not to listen to it, and then realized that it could never be the intention to let herself feel guilty, and so she dismissed the second thought as well. It surprised her that she could analyze the different opinions that had gone through her mind so calmly.

She grabbed her things, deciding to leave the last window as it was. She didn't find it easy, the voice of the striver was protesting vehemently. The voice that wanted her to keep her promise was now letting her know that she had decided right, that she didn't need to feel guilty now. Both voices seemed to want to get their right, but she knew it was best for herself to just stop because she didn't feel like it anymore. That last window would come up another time!

When she had cleaned up her things, she went to the kitchen and wrote a note for Annerieke. In the note she told that she had washed all the windows from the front except the rightmost one, on the kitchen side. She also described how she had come to her decision to quit, knowing that Annerieke would not only understand but also fully support her. Satisfied, she placed the bill on the kitchen counter and walked home.

To chapter 118. The dams break through...

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