I know I need to clean, organize, and get rid of a vast majority of the "stuff" filling our house. I am always battling "stuff" and materialism and the tricky realities regarding want and affluence within blue collar America. It is one of the lines on my bucket list... "Get ride of 1/2 of the possessions in our house." But all that being said, I have continued year after year to drag my feet, continued year after year to accumulate more and more. My junk drawers and cupboards continue to get junkier and junkier. The piles on my counters of papers and envelopes continues to get higher and higher, more and more.
The mess around me makes me feel off and irritable inside. I am one that finds a great rest and internal peace when my surroundings are neat and orderly... when LIFE is neat and orderly. But rarely is my life, or my house, anywhere close to neat and orderly. I have great intentions, but fail daily to get ahead and stay ahead on the war of the mess.
I recently boxed up everything from several of my kitchen cupboards and drawers. I got rid of several things, which allowed me to put away and organize after our new countertops were in. Oh those cupboards now operate on a high functioning capacity, and I love it. There were a few drawers and cupboards however still in dire need of being overhauled. I've been putting them on my to-do week after week, and continuing to ignore them week after week. Until this weekend. For whatever reason I finally attacked two drawers and a cupboard.
Oh mylanta, I should have done that a long time ago! I took everything out, cleaned, dumped, donated, organized... and only allowed half of it to go back. In the space newly available, I cleaned, organized, and moved all of my counter clutter into the cupboard, and closed the door on it. Utterly overwhelming. Utterly freeing in the moment of completion. It was almost an adrenaline rush of inner peace that washed over me in that moment.
As I was working on it all, I began thinking about how we all have junk drawers and cupboards inside us as well... Areas that are just cluttered and unorganized and messy and in dire need of attention. I think we would probably all benefit so much if we would just open those areas, see the clutter, organize and address the mess. Intentionally take the time to just pull everything out and examine it closely - not just continuing to ignore and close the door and drawer to it.
I believe there are times we need to try step up and just do the hard work to go through some of those areas. To either get rid of, let go of, come to grips with things... our habits, obsessions, worries, fears, insecurities... We need to attempt to better align, prune, sort, and put back in a much more working semblance of order.
I think for the same reason we have junk drawers in our house, in our lives we also keep holding onto and carrying around all this extra, unneeded baggage and "stuff". We see it, we know it, but often it's just easier to keep adding right on top of it rather than actually addressing any of it... We rarely allow ourselves to let God step in and work alongside us, to allow Him to help renew us, clean us, revive us, give us a fresh start.
We don't need a whole bunch of expensive and fancy new things to get ourselves going in the right direction (not to say that new custom closet organizer shelving isn't sometimes needed and welcomed). I think initially we just need to thin out, sift through, and attempt to better organize the gifts, talents, thoughts, goals, fears, and hopes within our own messy layers of our lives. The biggest thing we can do is merely allow ourselves to become cleaned and organized, pruned and sharpened, upgraded and recycled. Consider adding daily devotions, prayer, accountability groups, weekly sabbath to help organize the chaos within... These often quickly and quietly sets the ball in motion and continue us forward. The catalyst to continued insight and improvement and momentum.
Often it takes just a simple and subtle wake up call that today is the day, the moment we need to sit up and decide to start to tackle the mess, to tackle ourselves. This may take many, many seasons and much time, effort, and emotional fortitude to muddle through all our layers of unrest and mess. It is never quick or easy to come grips and embrace the work required of us.
But we're not alone, God will be right there in the thick of it all with us, helping guide us and move us forward. He wants to help us clean, and organize, and update, and better our lives, and ourselves, and our families. He wants us to live, laugh, love, and praise Him in all we say and do, free from clutter, and mess, and chaos. He wants us to reside in a state of peace and grace.
If we listen carefully, we will hear Him quietly knocking on the door of our hearts, and souls, and minds... waiting to help us embark upon the often overwhelming tasking of cleaning our junk drawers, both those within our external home, and those within our internal home.
{ next post "The Living Room of My Heart"}
{ previous post "Two Years Ago" HERE }
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