Cleaning Up

My life, it seems, is actually a span of many seasons.

I got to spend almost a week with her in her beautiful, clean, and organized home. The time was refreshing on many levels, and just what I needed. 

While I was away, when he wasn't at work, my amazing husband dedicated much of his time to painting our walls (to cover up the artwork my children had decided to display in just about every room and corner of our home). It was great to come home to clean walls...but it pushed every bit of our clutter right out into the center of our house. 

The contrast to the pristine, organized environment I'd just left was staggering and overwhelming. What this means, unfortunately, is that I spent much of my first day home crying instead of enjoying my people.

But God...His timing is always so perfect. While I was in Florida, I'd also finished the book I'd been reading (The Search for Significance, by Robert S. McGee), and had finally claimed freedom from the shame I'd been dragging around with me for years (you can read more about that in my last post, Rekindled). 

For as long as I could remember, I'd been bearing the weight of that shame and hopelessness, telling myself (in many areas of my life) that I just didn't have the ability to be any different: this was just how things were, attempts to change were futile. Of course, those weren't always my conscious thoughts, but the feelings lurked way down deep, lying in wait to sabotage any attempts I might make at actually being different.

But now, having claimed freedom, I came home to a place where I had to do something about it. I'm starting to sense a pattern in the way God works: He's all about the object lesson. He's not going to teach you anything without immediately giving you a way to practice what you've just learned.

And so, I came home to chaos, and I knew it was time to handle it.

At first, it seemed kind of easy. Despite much evidence to the contrary, I thoroughly enjoy organizing and employing organizational systems. Slowly, I started bringing order to places: the linen closet, the pantry, the food storage containers, the medicine cabinet and bathroom shelves, and that one section of cabinets in the kitchen things just sort of get tossed into.

However, I became deeply discouraged because, while I was making great progress in purging and organization, the parts of the house that are actually in view were still a wreck! Finally, I threw myself face-down before the Lord and just cried out: "God, this is so hard! I am trying to follow You diligently, but I gotta tell ya, it doesn't look like it's making a bit of difference! I'm getting so frustrated. It doesn't feel like this is EVER going to come together!"

God answered me quickly and succinctly: "Alissa, changes that last rarely come quick or easy."

When I related that back to Josiah, he just laughed and said, "Because, 'If it was easy, we wouldn't need Jesus,' right?" Man, I hate it when my own words come back to bite me in the butt, but at least they're accurate. (For any new readers, that's a phrase I've used time and again, both in writing and in person. My man knows me so well.)

God also keeps bringing this scripture to mind:

So let us not get tired of doing what is good.

At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing

if we don't give up.

Galatians 6:9 (NLT, emphasis added)

Thus, the efforts continue, day by day, piece by piece...slow and steady may just win the race after all.

But even as I wrote this, God showed me something else about my story (He's so cool like that). I had expressed to a couple friends that progress looked so slow because I had to purge and organize the hidden places first - places like closets and pantries - because otherwise, when I went through the larger, everyday places, I wouldn't have places to put things. There would be no order and the cycle would just continue.

The same thing has been happening in my heart in recent months. God removed me from just about anything that looked like progress and performance on the outside, so he could do some much-needed purging and healing on the inside, deep down in the hidden places. Now, slowly, that work is coming out, changing things in my home first, and then gradually working its way outward.

Change can't be real or lasting if it doesn't first occur inside, in the deep, hidden places - either in our hearts or our homes.

That's the plan for now: to continue to make slow, steady progress from the inside out, knowing if I just keep at it, depending on God for direction and strength, I'll eventually reap a harvest of blessing, in my life and in my home. 

It's hard, ya'll. Sometimes it's intensely painful, and at times, I'm discouraged, but man...in the end, it's definitely worth it.