Underneath the Couch

We had to move our couches this weekend. Pushing them to the side exposed big, nasty piles of dust and debris, along with a few "lost" items. Quite frankly, I felt embarrassed. I pride myself on keeping a clean house (which might be part of the problem), and this made me feel like a failure. Indeed, yes, if a perfectly clean house is the goal, I had failed. Failure left me feeling icky.

As I reasoned with myself, though, I reasoned that it is unwise to move the couches every week to clean under them. It is unwise for physical reasons, and for time reasons. I am not really strong enough to move couches, so I could get injured, and it doesn't make sense to spend the time it would take every week. Not moving the couches, though, leaves me needing to reckon with the mess.

I reckon that the mess reminds me that I am not perfect. The mess reminds me that something good enough has to be good enough. The mess reminds me that everyone has stuff they cover up. Sometimes it's good to look under the couch. Sometimes it's not.

Looking under the couch might look like getting real and vulnerable with friends or family about struggles. That happened in conjunction with the couch moving. I was at a near breaking point and had to talk to my mom about it. When she and my dad came down to help, she also saw the mess under the couches. Life is like that sometimes. It exposes our stuff. 

There are times are not good to look under a couch, too. Times I need to run out the door. Times when moments are limited. Times I need to invest in friends and family rather than navel-gazing. Times when my ego-strength is not strong enough to endure more introspection. Times that just aren't "right."

In my home and in my life, there were always be stuff "under the couch." It takes wisdom to know when to look and when not to look. It takes trust in God's sovereignty to deal with the stuff that emerges when I am not looking. May God grant both, as I am sure I will have many more opportunities in this life to see what's "underneath the couch."

When Life is Tangled

I've kind of hit a wall in life lately. I'm smiling in this picture, but if you look closely, you'll notice a few things:

-I'm wearing two watches because that's how much I have to keep track of time.
-I'm carrying my lunch box with only a few fingers because I'm also trying to hold my keys.
-All the pockets of my backpack are partly or fully open, and stuff is about to fall out.
-The spiral binding of my notebook has come off and is stuck on a flap of said backpack.

Basically, I'm a mess. And that's my life. When I get to this stage, I need to take a step back. I need to get back to the basics and focus on the essentials:

• Having a consistent sleep schedule.
• Eating regularly.
• Keeping things clean and organized.
• Staying physically active.
• Remaining plugged in to truth (e.g. The Bible, God's Word)

When life gets messy, things get tangled. My priorities get out of whack. I get tired and exhausted and confused and emotional and overwhelmed. But when I get back to the basics, things tend to settle and relax and I can regain some focus. May God give me strength to major on the majors and let the rest of the stuff of life sort itself out.

Clean it Up!

"Again Jesus called the crowd to him. He said, 'Listen to me, everyone. Understand this. Nothing outside of a person can make them "unclean" by going into them. It is what comes out of them that makes them "unclean."'"

~Mark 7:14-16, New International Reader's Version

Watch what you eat. Watch what you breathe. Watch what's in your mattress. Mandates to clean up our diets, environment, and homes are everywhere. We have websites devoted to clean eating, expensive air purifiers to keep smog out of our homes, and lots of people tout the benefits of organic, chemical-free bedding. These things aren't bad, per se, but I think we can hyper focus on these things.

As I've bopped in and out of the news scene these past few weeks (I purposely try not to consume much news because it all seems biased), I've seen a lot of hate. We hate because of race. We hate because of ethnicity. We hate because of sexual orientation. We hate because of mental illness. We hate because of stigma. We hate because of religion. There's a lot of ugly, yucky, unclean stuff.

So what if we put as much focus on cleaning up outflow as we put on cleaning up our intake? What if we listened more and spoke less? What if we gave more freely and took more sparingly? What if we empathized instead of criticizing? What if we did more perspective-taking instead of perspective-making? What if we loved more? 

I think love would do more to clean up our society than any amount of "clean" living could.

This post was inspired by my friends at Joni Perry, PLPC and A Reasonable Adventurer.