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I had a room full of sewing paraphrenalia and it was a mess with a capital M. MESS. A friend was helping me clean it up and while we talked, one of her friends stopped by. Now we all have our own way to clean things. There are those that polish up the outside and shove it all behind closed doors/drawers. This has an advantage of ensuring the room looks clean in a relatively short amount of time. Others work from the inside of the closets and drawers creating a bigger mess but making room for places to go in the long run. Both have their advantages and disadvantages.
I’m the latter person. My husband and I are perfect compliments to each other in this area. He’s a surface cleaner. He can make a room look perfect in very little time. I’m a deep cleaner. As a child, my parents would tell me to go clean my room and I’d start by dumping all my drawers on my bed and refolding everything. So between the two of us, I pull it all out nd put it back nicely cleaning the floors, shelves, and such, and he goes along and cleans up after me and the combination is perfect.
So, my friend is just like me. We’re cleaning, digging, perfecting small spots as we go, and her friend walks in, takes one look at the mess, how we’re “cleaning” it, and she says, “You’re just transferring the mess.”
Ouch.
She’s right. That’s exactly what we were doing. And to be honest, I had no intention of doing it any other way. It’s how I clean best. It takes me longer but it gets done right and it stays done right. It works for me.
But she’s still right. Transferring the mess is very inefficient. It’s also a way to avoid the job. It’s also, in another application, a very good way to “cast your cares on Him.” We need to develop a habit of “transferring the mess” in our lives to His shouders. Learn to let go of the baggage that you can’t carry, clean, or change anyway. Let it go. So your mother-in-law thinks you’re a bad housekeeper because she showed up the day your kids were spewing their last meal all over the floor. So what? Give it to Jesus. Let Him be your defender. Let His love and light shine through you as you compliment her beautiful shiny countertops and polished floors. So a woman at church accused you of doing something that you couldn’t possibly have done. Transfer it to Jesus. Let Him handle the mess.
Sometimes we have to tackle things head on- jump right into the fray and clean it out. Other times, we need to tranfer the mess to His shoulders.
I keep reading blogs, books, and hearing lessons and seminars on how if we’ll only do abc or 123 we’ll be godly, happy, healthy, wealthy, or wise.
Keep all your children isolated until they’re 35 and then have an arranged marriage for them and they’ll never sin.
Live an ascetic life and you’ll have a perfect home, godly kids, and less housework.
Use my homeschooling method and your kids will succeed academically beyond your wildest dreams.
Parent Jon Dough’s way and you’re guaranteed a kid who is compliant, independent, respectful, and fun.
It always starts with a principle. Let’s assume that First Opinions chapter four verse six says, “An unclothed table is succeptible to destruction.” The principle is clear- we need to protect the table. One method would be to keep a cloth on the table to help protect the wood from damage and dirt. Another method might be putting tempered glass over the table It has a nice advantage of allowing the beauty of the wood to shine through while still protecting it from spills and scratches. There are other options of course but let’s just stick with these two.
The methods are good things. They help us apply principles to our lives. Without methods, we tend to be ever “learning but never coming to the knowledge” of something. Not all methods are equal but people usually have a reason for why they chose theirs. For example, with the methods I’ve described, maybe Jane’s grandmother always used a cloth, Jane’s mother always used one, and Jane herself has followed suit. Cloths just ‘feel’ right. Why wouldn’t you use a cloth? But Sally, who used to use cloth, got tired of washing the thing, hated the stains that resulted, and still thought that the things that soaked through the cloth were bad for the wood so when she found glass, she was all for it!
Oh dear. Two methods. What ever will happen? Well, honestly, most people choose a preference and move on with life. After all, who wants to get worked up over cloth or glass on tabletops. This is a good thing that it usually stops here. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always. Inevitably, a method will grow into something stronger than it was ever intended to be. It was meant to be a means of accomplishing an end but instead, it has now become the end- the goal. Now, instead of the slave, the method is the slavemaster.
And method begats lifestyle. Suddenly, there are books, videos, CDs, and seminars about why you should avoid cloth or glass like the plague. Others come out with different methods. Oh no, vinyl is the best! It has the protective qualities of glass without the harshness! Entire subcultures of society emerge as people allow the simple choice of how to cover your table to invade every corner of their lives.
The worst part is when as a final rejection of the lifestyle extreme, a new breed arises. They’ll reject all table coverings as unnatural. The table was designed and created to be as it is. It’s wrong to cover it at all! So, because common sense has been tossed out the east windows, we now toss it out of the west too and in the end, what do we have? Tables covered, not, and with differing products. People clustered around others who have made the same table covering choices- each suspiciously looking at the other groups as though they are out to corrupt the purity of their table doctrines.
It’s just a table. You are allowed to like it with cloth, glass, vinyl, or any other substance. You’re allowed to choose not to cover it at all.
Contrary to the way we act sometimes, God didn’t make everything a sin or not. Some things are left to our preferences and discretion. And this is ok. One woman can use Tapestry of Grace to teach her children while another uses PACEs. Neither are more holy. One can grow all of her own food while another shops at the grocery store- God didn’t condemn either of them. One can dress like a prairie muffin while the other dresses like a fortie’s housewife. Neither style has been sanctioned by God as the only right method.
And you can choose a lifestyle that fits your methods… or you can let your methods become so dear to you that they are your lifestyle.
I don’t want my methods to be my defining characteristic. Conversely, I want my defining characteristics to demonstrate why I choose what methods I choose.
Balance. It’s kind of become a dirty word in sooooooo many ways. We hear phrases like,
“… balance the budget.”
And instead of being the logical and practical thing that it is, we cringe. It usually means cutting our spending (whether we’re talking about government spending or personal, it’s all the same in the end) and not living in the style we’d like to become accustomed.
I find it strange, however, that when I was a child, balance was a good thing. We heard sermons about balancing work and family, church and home, and similar things. We all liked it even. What happened?
I remember the first time I ever heard balance spoken of as though it was a bad thing. Jonathan Lindvall was here in Ridgecrest doing his Bold Parenting Seminars and he spoke about “balance” and the connotation was anything but good. I don’t remember all he said but the one thing that stuck firmly in my mind was that balance is a word that isn’t “good” and he illustrated it with the following example:
If you have a pair of scales and you put good on one side, what do you have to put on the other to be “balanced”? Evil.
I had serious problems with this. Anyone who knows me knows that I can see lots of sides to a coin and the layers in between! I immediately wondered why one couldn’t balance one good with another. Why must good be on the scale at all?
The context was in that of sheltering our children and in what influences we allow etc. I didn’t actually disagree with most of his points but I did disagree heartily with what I consider to be a flawed illustration. While I wholeheartedly agreed with his comments about how being for Jesus is a radical thing, I disagree (as anyone who knows me knows) that everything is a good vs. evil equation. Yes, if we are not for Jesus we are against Him; however, that doesn’t mean that if we are for chocolate, we are against carob.
What happened to the idea that we kept life on a more even keel rather than constantly fighting the ups and downs of life? Rather than riding waves of extremes, it’s about time that we embrace the concept of balancing our “goods” and simply rejecting the evils from the options from which we choose our “goods” in the first place.
It’s time to see balance as a reasonable expression of wisdom rather than a seven letter word squished into four.
Ever notice how everyone has a different idea of the perfect church? A lot of times, you can only tell by what they don’t like in a church but we all have our idea of the ‘ideal church.’ My in-laws value friendliness, especially in the pastor/preacher. One of our favorite ministers was found lacking in their view because in his natural shyness, he wasn’t blatantly open and welcoming. My parents, on the other hand, value space. They don’t want to be smothered by friendly faces as they enter the door. They don’t know you, they aren’t your new best friend. Give ‘em room.
I was thinking about this today as I pondered the different kinds of churches and I realized, that this is the point of the church. We are to be “all things to all men” when we can but of course we can’t truly do that especially when there are many different kinds of “men” at one time but we can individually help make the corporate church a place of comfort.
Some of the best advice I’ve ever been given is to be the church you want to have. If you want to enter the doors and feel welcome, then by all means, welcome people as you would be. If you’d want a little space to warm up and get to know someone, then do that. If you want a church where children are valued, value the children around you- especially those that aren’t easy. If you want a church where educational choice is respected, then show respect for the authority of parents who make different choices than you have. If you value modesty, then be an example of modesty in all things.
In a world of things that can divide God’s church even farther than it already is, why do we let things that aren’t a threat to the purity of doctrine, be such bones of contention? So the teens have pizza parties and you don’t see that as a legitimate use of church funds and time- does the doctrine from the pulpit align with the Word? So the ladies have retreats and you’re convicted to serve in your home- is what is taught there Scriptural? So there isn’t a welcoming committee to every new visitor- is Jesus welcomed there?
This world is full of fallen people. The church is full of fallen but redeemed people. That is proof that every facet of Christ’s church has redeeming qualities- the Holy Spirit resides there. Do we “quench” the Holy Spirit by our lukewarm attitude toward the less than perfect among us? Have we become so arrogant as to forget that in our critique of the imperfections of others around us that we too are imperfect and part of someone else’s idea of an imperfect church?
Oh that we’d become deeper than the sum total of our personal preferences or convictions
It’s been over twenty years but I remember it as though I was still living it. Two young women, both stubborn and immature in their thoughts and actions stood at an impasse. Over dishes. A simple sink of dishes. Yes, I was one of the young women.
I was home all day- the other wasn’t. It wasn’t my turn and I self-righteously felt put upon and irritated. After all, I let her move into my apartment. It was her turn. She, on the other hand, was in the middle of grueling classes. I was home all day. Why couldn’t I just do the dishes this time? (Why indeed?)
I don’t know what made me so ugly and thoughtless. I wasn’t usually that nasty but I silently and consistently refused to wash them. For at least three days, they sat in the kitchen sink stinking up the room and serving as a silent reminder to both of us just how juvenile we both were being.
I’ll never forget the sermon. It was wordless. Another friend knew of the ugliness and as I slept through another afternoon of exhausted early pregnancy, he came into the apartment when he should have been working on his own homework, and cheerfully washed every single dish, dried them, put them away, and scrubbed the kitchen. I woke up just as he finished. I saw the room and felt smug satisfaction that finally she had seen things my way. Oh it hurts to admit that. Then I saw him. The silent preacher stepped back in the door after hanging up the damp kitchen towel on the back rail. I was irritated. Now not only had she gotten out of her responsibilities, but she’d made someone else shirk theirs to do hers.
At about that time, she came in. She saw the clean kitchen, and hugged me (her first mistake). She said something like, “I’m glad you decided to be reasonable. I’ll do them tomorrow.”
I stormed out of the room. Seconds later, a hand turned the knob and he stepped into my room. He didn’t say a word but he looked at me. Disappointed. Shame filled my heart and I repented.
I don’t know if I ever told him thank you. I wouldn’t know where to find him now if I could but I’m saying it now. Thank you. That little act of humility and charity has stayed with me for years. Everytime I’m tempted to make someone else ‘do what is right’ by not stepping in and just doing it to relieve a burden, I remember him and I thank the Lord for his sermon. It has been one of the most eloquent sermons of my life.
This is a continuation of my previous post, Loving Life… (Part 1)
Last blog, I talked about starting with just one idea, how much ascetic living drains me, and continuing in that theme, how I need variety to truly enjoy the work that comes with this life that I love. You see, I think life is a gift. We’ve been put here for a purpose. Acts says “He sets the exact times and places in which they should live…” That is an amazing thing to me and as a current commercial reminds us, we have just this one chance at this life on earth. There are no do-overs in this life of ours. We look forward to a new and better life but this one here, this one now, this is a wonderful gift and throwing it away on waiting for tomorrow is ungrateful and so very sad to me.
I have limitations to how I can live this life. I’m still not 100% myself and it shows in how much I can physically accomplish but today, I had one of those little breakthroughs. I love those things. I got up to visit the bathroom as I do half a dozen times a day or more and I realized that if I just spent five minutes every time I do that, improving some area of my home before I sit back down, I could accomplish a lot of things. I tried it. I walked into the kitchen, glanced at the clock and saw 1:42. The kitchen was a mess. It wasn’t filthy or in need of deep cleaning, but it looked like it because it was a mess. In five minutes, I removed all of that mess, without hurrying, without any strenuous labor, and the result made me smile. I also wanted to keep going but that’s what I usually do. I go and go and go until I drop from exhaustion and then resist trying again; so this time, I didn’t. I just sat down. Next time I get up, I’m going to do five more minutes. Five.
Do you have any idea how quickly five minutes pass? I bet by the time you’re done reading this blog entry, five minutes will have passed. In the time it takes the average person to read this blog, I cleaned the mess from my kitchen. Now truthfully, not every time I go into my kitchen is five minutes going to make such a significant difference. Sometimes, it truly is filthy and it needs much more time to get it up to speed but it worked this time and that’s what this experiment was all about. This time.
But you know, as much as I know that I need this extra emphasis on my home and my schedule, the fact is, I need to remember that there is more to life than a clean and orderly home. The purpose of this home is a shelter, not a slave. If I expend all of my energies on my shelter, then what shelters me from that shelter? This life is to be lived! Enjoyed! Cherished! I have people who mean everything to me that need to know they come first, not my schedule, not my ‘things’ and certainly not my house. It’s a very fine balance that often leaves us wondering where we go next and what we do next.
Where do you find the balance between realizing that fingerprints on the walls disturb the internal balance of peace and the knowledge that fingerprints will always be with you? I seriously doubt that you find it in reading about every method of fingerprint eradication and in scheduling constant fingerprint removal sessions. Surely at some point you have to decide that while you’d rather be fingerprint free, you’d much rather enjoy the people who made the prints in the first place.
Unfortunately, the fact is, we do often need an “overhaul.” Few people live lives that are so well ordered or are so laid back that they never need to “retrench” and start anew. I’m certainly not one of those people. Actually, if I lived alone, in my own little home, with no one else to answer to or to affect my surroundings, I might be. I know I was for the few months I lived alone in Texas. My house was spotless at all times and with truly very little work. Not until a roommate came in, did I find that what was easy alone, was horribly difficult with others in the mix. Even at home with my parents and ‘my own room’, I wasn’t nearly as tidy and consistent. I truly don’t know why but I wasn’t.
Overhauls, however, have a very strong tendency to take over you life. If not carefully controlled, they become more and more intrusive until you either become enslaved by a new regime, or you rebel, quit, and never succeed. So while I do like my little “five minute marathons” (As opposed to dashes), I recognize that I need more than that. At this point in my life, all those little marathons will do is keep me from sinking under the weight of what must be done. I want to pull off those weights entirely but if I try to do it all at once, I will fail. I refuse to let it win because I will not fail at life.
So I am wondering. How much of my five minute marathon idea can be expanded slightly in order to accomplish the overhauls I need to work on as well? Can I do one hour overhauling marathons? Work in depth in one area every so often until I succeed? I’m an instant society person. I want it all, I want it done, and I want it done now. But let’s face it, that’s not going to happen so it’s time to look at reality and plan from there.
My goal? It’s simple really. Start n the most “finished” area of my life, polish it up, keep it going, and move to the next. The most jumbled messes will take so long for me to see fruit in, that I think I need my spirit boosted by success befoer I work on those nemeses of mine.
In between, I intend to stop, buy a rose or two, and inhale their fragrance. Life is too short to spend with cleaning solution as the perfume.
I love my life. At the physical center of that life is my home. I love my home. I love the colors, the textures, and the accents that make my home a reflection of those who live in it. Because of that, when my home is out of sorts, I am out of sorts. I don’t do well when things don’t flow smoothly.
Twenty years ago, I declared war on my natural tendency toward perfectionism. In my naturally extreme style, instead of balancing myself, I forced myself into another extreme. (Why is this so common for people?) I went from washing walls on a weekly basis to piles of dishes and clutter because I didn’t want to create stress in my home. Of course, that backfired. Sure, others weren’t stressed but my stress compounded exponentially until it was time to insist on balance.
The problem is, occasionally, I still make these wide swings. Now, I’m not as extreme as I once was, but I still find myself in bouts of disorder and my initial response is the overwhelming urge to overhaul my entire life. Do you see the extreme? Right now, my dining table has some trash on it, a machine that needs to be put away, play dough canisters, a Playmobil Roman coliseum, and a dish. There’s a basket of clean laundry on the floor and a bit of miscellaneous clutter here and there. So, do I immediately think, “Clear the table, clear the floor, wash the dish, fold the laundry, and put away the clutter?” Oh no. My first thought was, “Clear the table, clear the floor, wash the dish, fold the laundry, put away the clutter, the pictures need new tacky putty, the ribbons are sloppy, the walls and trim need scrubbing, the bookcase needs oil, the couch needs reupholstering, I need to oil the floor, the wires are driving me nuts, they have to go…”
Can you see how crazy it gets? I don’t why I do this, but I do. It feels like if I don’t put every single aspect of my life in place, all at once; I’ll fall apart. Of course, the reverse is the truth. If I try to overhaul everything simultaneously, I’ll burn, fizz, and die with nothing accomplished and much left for others to scramble as they try to pick up the pieces I dropped along the way. You can’t be all things to all men all the time all at once all by yourself… not even for yourself.
What is even more pathetic, is that I also usually begin thinking of things like how to revamp school, the 1001 projects I have either started or planned to start, or realize that I must start yesterday, oh and inevitably, I’ll want a new schedule. Just in case the previous overkill was insufficiently grand for me. Want to know a secret? Just thinking about all of this tends to ensure that I am instantly overwhelmed. My natural response? I crawl into myself, ignore the slight disorder that brought it on, and convince myself it’ll go away if I just ignore it long enough and thanks to wonderful husbands and children, the surface problems do.
A few times, I’ve been uncharacteristically wise. I’ve seen the path of destruction my flesh wants to lay out for me and I’ve laughed and said, ‘No way!” However, instead of shoving my head in the proverbial sand, those times were amazingly successful because I put a few simple rules in place for myself.
1. Start with one idea. I know, deep isn’t it? It may be as simple as Flylady’s “shiny sink” example or as complex as a new housework system for the whole family. It doesn’t matter what it is, but it has to be specific, attainable, and specialized. There’s no General Practice for this idea. You want a specialist. I remember one time, it was a simple thing of putting all sewing things away before I went to bed. I was sewing often at the time but not non-stop. I needed to take the time to do it and do it right. When I’m sewing for eight hours a day and six days a week, I don’t have time to put everything away each night. It doesn’t save time and clean-up, it makes more work for me. But when I’m working on one or two projects over a several day period, I can afford, and should take the time to do it.
Another time, it was keeping my laundry ironed. It was very important to me for that time to keep it crisp and finished… so I did! I added other things as I reestablished whatever routine had been replaced by the tyranny of the urgent and reaped the rewards but the key was, “Start with just one idea.” You can’t just master one thing over a few weeks, months, or years and then move onto the next. You do have to juggle more than one ball as a wife and mother- especially as a homeschooling wife and mother. However, getting a rhythm back when you’re rusty starts with the first ball. You slowly add the others in until you’ve reached your limits. You can switch out a red ball for a blue or a yellow for a green but you can’t pick up all the balls you have and start tossing them willy nilly hoping you’ll keep most in the air if you haven’t been practicing all along. That being said, there is definitely a limit to how many you can juggle period. We are not superwoman. We may roar, but we re not superwoman.
2. Aesthetics over Ascetics. For me, if the world around me isn’t beautiful, I feel defeated. I am not invigorated by a spartan utilitarian life. I am inspired by color, beauty, and creativity. I’ve tried not to care if the silverware matches or the tablecloth is pretty but it never works. I do care. I find a sparse room with bare essentials just as unsatisfactory as I do a room loaded with junk. I cannot stand a bare wall but neither do I like one cluttered with no place for your eye to rest. A bare table can be lovely but a vase of flowers speaks to my soul. When I find myself overwhelmed by the magnitude of what I know needs to change, one of the things I can guarantee is that I need to clear any clutter and ensure that what is supposed to beautify is doing its job. Otherwise, out it goes and in comes something that does. My tastes change. This used to bother me but it doesn’t anymore. When I was in junior high and high school, I loved walnut and mahogany. After I’d been married for a few years, I discovered I liked oak, birch, and unstained pine. In recent years, I’ve discovered that some things, I prefer painted. In the most recent months, I find myself drawn to cherry, rosewood, and ebony. When once I would never have considered a black picture frame, now it is all that I buy. If the day comes that I don’t like to see those frames, I’ll switch to something else or paint them.
Whatever I do, I need to make sure I love the rooms I own. There is no excuse for me to have a room that I find distasteful. I have the means, the ability, and the time to keep my house the haven that my family and I need.
3. Spice it up with variety. If I focus only on decor or only on housekeeping, or only on a schedule, I’ll burn out. I need variety. Even when I’m working on a novel, I have to mix it up. The reason that I have thirty novels in progress isn’t an inability to finish what I start, but (aside from not wanting to lose a good idea when it comes to me) the need for variety to keep me from going stir crazy. This translates into my ‘real world’ life. If all I do is keep the clutter picked up, I’ll stagnate into a robotic machine. It’s just how I am wired (and a lot of my friends are the same so I know it’s not just my natural quirkiness). If I only hand out schoolwork and correct papers, I’m doomed to despise home educating but if I throw in something that I enjoy (even if it’s something ridiculous like explaining why gerunds are so cool!) suddenly the dreaded chore is just another job in my life. I may never delight in it, but I don’t dread it anymore. A spice cake without the spice is bland and blah. Spice it up.
Those who know me well, know how I love poetry that teaches or tells a story. I’m not exactly fond of sonnets and odes to eyebrows or rhapsodizing over an autumn leaf, but tell the story of a drunk in a French barroom, how children saw Jesus in action under the name of ‘Santa Claus’, or the lesson of a wise ‘fool’ and I’m all eyes and ears. I love the rhythm, the cadence. My throat catches when I hear it read well.
Those who know me well, also know my love for Edward Roland Sill’s The Fool’s Prayer. This poem depicting a court jester called forth to ‘entertain’ a drunken rout of royalty with a prayer (presumably the expectation is of irreverence) has a lesson we could all learn. The king in the poem certainly learns but there are two verses that pierce me every time I hear or read it.
These clumsy feet, still in the mire,
Go crushing blossoms without end;
These hard, well-meaning hands we thrust
Amid the heart-strings of a friend.
The ill-timed truth we might have kept-
Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung?
The word we had not sense to say-
Who knows how grandly it had rung!
Today I was reading a book and in it, it referenced another book Leaving the Light On by John Trent. I’ve never read that book but they shared an excerpt from it in the book I am reading and it reminded me of this poem. It haunts me deeply. I found myself beginning to feel choked and tears formed at the back of my eyes. This is how my book The Worn Out Woman retells John Trent’s story.
“… John Trent tells a beautiful story about a little girl who is feeling out of sorts. One Saturday morning the dad tells his little girl that he wants to take her on a date to her favorite restaurant- she can choose. Within an hour, they’re sliding into a booth at McDonald’s. Before they start in on their foam platters of eggs and pancakes, the dad takes his little girl’s hand and tells her how thankful he is that she belongs to their family. He uses words like treasure and precious and he points out some specific things about her that he loves.
“When the father finally picks up his fork to start eating, the little girl pushes his hand back down and softly pleads ‘longer, daddy… longer.’ So once again he takes her hand and tells her how much she means to him. Three more times he hears, ‘Longer, daddy… longer’ and complies. then, when they finally get home he hears her skip into the kitchen and announce to her mom, ‘Guess what! I’m special. Daddy told me so.’”
Can you imagine the impact if someone did that to you in your lfe? I truly cannot imagine it but it’s beautiful. It is so beautiful. I saw a video on YouTube recently that illustrates it uniquely. Bones fans will love it!
Do yourself and those you love a favor in the next week. Make a point to fill someone’s heart with your love and admiration for them. Don’t choose the person who always gets your affirmation. Choose someone you don’t usually do this with and see what happens. Think about it; would you rather hear how much you are appreciated and loved from the person who always tells you that or would you just once want to hear it from the one person that you never felt accepted you?
Now… sit back. Close your eyes. Hear Jesus’ whisper. “You are loved with an everlasting love.” Even if no human has ever expressed that kind of cherishing and love for you, Jesus did. With everything in Him, He calls to you. “Come you who are weary and laden with burdens and I will be your rest.”
Amen.
