Wednesday, October 7, 2009

...across the room to clean the other room.....


It all started with the old refrigerator that came with the house we bought. Definitely on it's last leg, we decided it needed to be replaced before we faced coming home from a holiday one day to a stinky food mess! As usual I had my sights set on something that wouldn't quite work in the space the former owners had carved out for the small unit now in distress. Although the house was well looked after we had toyed with the idea of making some changes. Long story short, one idea led to another and before we knew it we found ourselves head first into a total home renovation project! With no prior experience to rely on I found myself having to learn at a seemingly impossible rate how to step into the "project manager" position and how to make me look like I knew what I was doing! Thankfully we survived the grueling year long endurance test and finished within the projected time frame. By that time we were both so finished with making decisions that we decided to take a break from making any additional purchases like furniture and a few other items. The one room that suffered from this decision was my laundry room/office. This room ended up being the junk room. I couldn't decide whether I should allow this room to function as a combination laundry/office or just let it be a laundry room and create a little office niche in another area of the house. One thousand and seven conversations weighing the pros and cons later I decided to combine the two. The past six months have been the most difficult for me as I tried to ignore the mess in that room. However lately I noticed that I was having a terrible time trying to keep the rest of my house organized and tidy when I felt like there was nothing I could do about the mess behind that one door in the house! Finally one day I went to the big city and bought all the units I thought I needed in order to finish this room. Thanks to my handy husband we managed to clean up that mess in just two short days! Miraculously my house seems to have expanded by so much more than that one space. I love to keep the door of my laundry room open now because it doesn't bother me at all to have people see what's inside! It is clean, neat and tidy! I never want to leave folded clothes on my dryer any more. I want to fold them on my new table and put them away! As for the rest of my house.....I have no trouble keeping it clean and tidy any more either. I love to walk from room to room and see that everything is in it's rightful place. Had I known it would make such a huge difference in my life I would have done this LONG AGO!
This experience got me thinking about my life and in particular my relationship with God. Sometimes I let an area of my life get a little messy. I might develop a habit that I know is not good or right in God's eyes but I choose to ignore how it makes me feel because there is a certain pay off, like perhaps instant gratification. If I persist in this sin it won't take long for me to let some other area of my life slide. Suddenly I don't want to hear from God so I slack off on reading His Word or praying. My life becomes messy. I have known God long enough that I just simply cannot tolerate something coming between Him and myself for long. I miss Him so dreadfully and soon I will find myself on my knees asking His forgiveness and help so that I can clean up, dust off that sin and throw open the doors of all the rooms in my heart for Him with nothing around to crowd Him out! What a great place to be. May we all be able to keep the doors of the rooms of our hearts wide open all the time! PEACE!
(notice no clothes on the dryer?)

2 comments:

Michele said...

Looks beautiful Mom!

Elayne said...

Thanks! :)