Sunday, April 1, 2012

My house was clean last week, er year...


It's a mess right now.  My house, that is.  A mess according to me.  Maybe a disaster according to you or maybe I'm doing pretty good.

At any rate, a purpose of this post is to put everyone's minds at ease:  I don't live in a magazine house.  You can see our school room picture below.  Yes, I do have organized shelves and a blue wall behind those shelves thanks to some down time during Christmas break and my friends Linda and Shelby who helped me paint. 

Thankful and hopeful.

Notice the empty laundry basket on the school table along w/ whatever art project and school work some child left behind.

Then you have the entryway w/ a couple of random laundry baskets and a chair that really belongs at the school table, but for some reason has sat here in the entry way for a couple of days (as have the baskets) because all of us have forgotten how to put something away as we walk past it.  Or we think it's the latest sculpture of the week.

Regardless, there they sit.  And yes, I'm going to go ahead and call them art: "ode to laundry."

And random car seat and dog clearly not disturbed by the things out of place along w/ some coats my friend gave us over a month ago.  They like it on the top of the antique trunk.

And here we have my office, which I took a picture of from the messiest angle.  There's no after picture...yet.  You can't really tell, but my desk is only clear where the keyboard and mouse are.

Why these pictures?

Well, because the other day I was on one of my favorite blogs that I find great inspiration from.  She always posts beautiful photos of whatever has caught her eye that day, including her family and her house.  She has 6 kids, like me.  She homeschools, like me.  Her house is clean, not like me.  At least in her photos.

I want to ask her to post a picture every now and then when there's mess on the table and paper on the floor and laundry still in the laundry basket.

I'm sure those days happen for her too...she writes about them.  The pictures of them just don't wind up on her blog which is fine...it just struck me I needed to post a picture of my mess without apology or any promise that I'm working to get it cleaned up.

I'm obviously not since I'm blogging almost daily, keeping up with facebook, emailing, fixing meals, taking kids here and there, doctoring dog, managing, teaching, walking, working out, folding the occasional basket of clean laundry, studying, napping, refereeing, celebrating birthdays, planning, playing music, thinking...anything I can find to do EXCEPT straighten the house.

But that's ok.  It's day will come.  At least I hope so.  It really does bother me to have so much visual clutter about.  My brain, like it or not, registers every thing that is out of place or without a place and logs it in a registry of "this needs to get done."

There may be a problem (hesitate to tackle messes due to constant interruptions, feeling overwhelmed, etc.) and perhaps there really is something that God is working in the midst of these messes that cannot get cleaned up quite yet because it would prematurely interrupt what He is doing.  I find a measure of comfort in that...at least it's not because I'm (gasp) lazy.

He is working.  I know it.  In spite of dusty surfaces and moldy caulking around bathtubs and unvacuumed floors and unchecked school work, He is working.  He is taking every mess and using it for my good, conforming me into His image.

This candle symphony sitting in the midst of misplaced items on coffee table is what we are using to countdown to Easter.  It's here that all the messes of the body and mind and heart collide. 

We take turns lighting a candle, moving the cross, ever nearing the center.  The light increases with each subsequent candle that we light, and so does the peace.  With each candle lit I am reminded to pause and take note of the little (or big) hand that lights it, of the many blessings I have all around me, of the greatest blessing of all which is that these messes of body, mind and heart are not too big for God.

Jesus bore them all.

And last I checked, He didn't ask me to take any of them back.

So this long and messy post is also about me handing my visible and not-so-visible messes back to Him. 

Here you go (again), Jesus.  My mess and my need to understand and my dreams/goals/wants/needs...I'm handing them back to you.  Thank You for coming as my Prince of Peace, for dethroning the tyrant of perfectionism in my life, for reestablishing Your peace and Your order according to Your plan for my life.

I choose to trust You in the process, no matter what it looks like.

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