The washing machine broke down again. At 11 p.m., I stood in my basement laundry room. I held my mother’s dirty nightgown in one hand and my daughter’s soccer uniform in the other. Both needed cleaning by morning. My 83-year-old mother had moved in with us six months ago after her stroke. She needed clean clothes for her physical therapy appointment. My 12-year-old daughter had an away game. This game would decide if her team made the playoffs.

In that instant, surrounded by mounds of laundry that seemed to grow faster than I could clean them, I felt the burden of being stuck between generations—what researchers call the sandwich generation. But as I knelt on the chilly basement floor washing clothes by hand in the utility sink, something unexpected occurred. The steady motion of scrubbing turned into a rhythm of prayer.

Lord make me an instrument of your peace, I caught myself murmuring as I worked on the stain on my mother’s nightgown. The words of the Prayer of St. Francis, learned by heart years ago in Catholic school, came out without prompting from a deep part of my soul. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.

I’d been feeling bitter—about my brothers and sisters who lived too far to lend a hand, about friends whose biggest problem was picking a TV show to watch, about a church that talked a lot about family values but didn’t help women like me swamped by the daily tasks of looking after different generations.

But down in the basement, with my hands in soapy water, I started to see something I hadn’t before. This wasn’t just washing clothes. This was a way to show love, a simple task that showed kindness in action.

My mom spent 30 years washing my clothes, making my lunches and driving me to practices and appointments. She stayed up with me when I had fevers and heartbreaks. She celebrated every little win and felt sad about every letdown as if they were her own. Now, as dementia took bits of her memory, washing her nightgown became my way to honor that history of care.

And my daughter—strong-willed, set on her goals, growing up too fast—still needed me in big and small ways. Clean uniforms were just the start. She needed to see that taking care of family wasn’t a chore but a mission, that you could find pride in helping others, that love sometimes looks like soap and hard work at midnight.

The Prayer of St. Francis kept going: Where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope.

I had searched for hope in all the wrong spots—in government programs that could help with my mother’s care, in my husband’s promotion that might ease our money troubles, in the slim chance that my brothers and sisters would do more. But hope, I understood, was right there in my hands, in the basic task of cleaning something dirty, of getting ready for tomorrow’s needs today.

We Catholics talk about seeing God everywhere, but I always thought that meant in lovely church services or deep religious insights, not in the constant cycle of washing clothes and doctor visits that had become my daily routine. Yet there I was, finding the holy in the everyday, meeting Jesus in the most common acts of helping others.

In my younger days, I believed being faithful meant big actions—maybe joining a religious group helping poor people in some faraway land, or at least being the type of Catholic woman who ran church fundraisers and taught Bible classes. I never thought it might look like researching adult day programs, setting up doctor appointments and, yes, washing load after load of clothes.

As I washed my mom’s nightgown and my child’s uniform in the same sink, I realized how everything connected. Three generations of women tied together by blood and the many little things we do to take care of each other. Every time we cook a meal, give someone a ride or worry about something, we add to the web of love that keeps families, and the world, together.

Where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.

My mom’s stroke brought dark times to our family—watching someone I love struggle with typically easy tasks, not knowing what the future held, and feeling swamped and isolated. But we saw some bright spots too. My daughter began to read to her grandma when words became hard, neighbors started to drop by more often, and our family prayer before dinner got deeper and more meaningful.

When I finished washing and hung the clothes to dry, it was almost midnight. I should have felt beat, but I felt fired up, like I’d stumbled onto something big. The laundry room had turned into a chapel, the utility sink a baptismal font, where I’d found—or rediscovered—my calling.

I don’t need to write big religious books or lead huge social movements. My job is to care for the people God puts right in front of me, to see their problems as chances to be kind, to find something special in the everyday work of keeping a family going.

The washing machine would get fixed tomorrow. My mom would have clean clothes for her visit, and my daughter would make it to her game. These small wins might not change everything, but they would change everything for the people I care about most.

And in that basement laundry room, I figured out that sometimes the best prayer is not said out loud. It is lived, one load of laundry at a time.