Spring Cleaning

I always get the urge to spring clean at inconvenient moments: 10 minutes before I need to leave the house in the morning, or just before I leave work.  Sometimes the mood takes me just before bed.  Whenever it hits, I feel almost compelled to clean and tidy and sort right then.

 

There is no stopping me.

 

However, I can rarely conjure up this same spirit of ruthless sorting, organising and tidying when I want to.  I'm still able to sort and tidy, but not with the same gusto as when these spring cleaning moments occur.

 

Today was such a day.

 

I was just about to leave work when I was overcome with a desire to sort out all of the miscellaneous paper work which has been accumulating around my desk.

 

I felt so much better post-tidy.  I could see my desk again, things were organised and I felt that order had been restored to my world.

 

Sometimes I feel like I need a thorough 'spring clean' in my heart and in my mind, too.  I need to sort through all of the miscellaneous paperwork which has accumulated - the thoughts and beliefs, the doubts and disappointments and dreams - and I need to tidy them up.  Some need to be kept for the future and stored away.  Some should be thrown away and some can be recycled and made into something new.

 

I love this passage in Isaiah which describes this spring-cleaning process, this starting again -

 

"They'll rebuild the old ruins, raise a new city out of the wreckage.  They'll start over on the ruined cities, take the rubble left behind and make it new."

 

[Isaiah 61:5 MSG]

 

As it seems that Spring is perhaps finally arriving and as I start to spring-clean the places in my life, I want to spend some time spring-cleaning the places in my heart as well. 

 

 

 

Why Tidying Is Not Always A Good Thing

Whenever people come round to my flat, I always feel the need to tidy things up a bit - even if all I do is 'neaten' the mess.

 

The other day, before a friend came round, I only had time to complete one task.  I found myself thinking: I'll do the washing up rather than the ironing.  Having my washing out is a sign that I am clean - I have done my washing.  But having dirty dishes stacked up seems dirty and unclean.

 

I made my mess 'acceptable'.

 

Or if I haven't had time to tidy, I find myself apologising and telling people to forgive or ignore the mess.

 

I was challenged today by how I do this spiritually as well: I present my 'problems' in a tidy package.  I make my mess 'acceptable'.  Or I apologise for it and ask people to ignore it.

 

I was trying to think of what would be an appropriate response to someone seeing the messiness of my life - both the literal mess and the spiritual mess.

 

Asking them to ignore it or forgive it or imagine it's not there is neither possible nor helpful.  Frantically rushing around before they arrive to tidy up (or panicking over unplanned guests), leaves me exhausted and wondering if I've missed a bit.

 

Perhaps a much better response would be to say, Here is my mess, please could you help me sort it out?

 

I want to be honest about my struggles and my mess.  Because in honesty there is freedom.  And because no one can help you clear up the mess if you don't let them see it.

 

The Psalmist wrote,

 

"And me?  I'm a mess.  I'm nothing and have nothing: make something of me. You can do it; you've got what it takes."

 

[Psalm 40:17 MSG] 

 

God does have what it takes to make something of us.  But first we have to acknowledge and own our mess.  Rather than hiding it, or ignoring it and asking others to ignore it too.

 

 

 

My Life Is A Mess

Whenever I tidy something or have a 'spring clean', everything always looks worse, much worse, when I am half-way through.  And when it looks like that - with so many piles of stuff everywhere that you wonder where it was all hiding - I always question why I started.

 

It's at times like these when I have to fight the strong temptation to just walk away.  Or to shove it all into a box or under the bed, out of sight.

 

It seems to be, as Jane Austen would say, "a truth universally acknowledged" that things have to get worse before they get better when it comes to tidying and cleaning.  I wonder if there is some sort of science behind it all?

 

And it seems that when we are sorting things out in our hearts and in our lives, things often get messy before they get better as well.  And we have to fight the same temptation to run away and to hide our issues under the bed again.

 

Sometimes in order to sort things out and to be put back together, we need to first be taken from together.  We need to be broken in order to be properly mended.  And that is messy.

 

But God is in the mess with us.  And He will help to rebuild us.

 

      "For God is out to help Zion,

      Rebuilding the wrecked towns of Judah."

 

       [Psalm 69:35 MSG]

 

       And,

 

       "You’ll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew,
       rebuild the foundations from out of your past.
       You’ll be known as those who can fix anything,
       restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate,
       make the community livable again.

 

      [Isaiah 58:12 MSG]

 

I heard this the other day,

"Have the courage to be imperfect."

I have spent most of my life chasing perfection.  The illusive idea that if I tried just a little bit harder, if I was just a little bit better, my life might be easier/better/more fulfilling.

 

I have run from imperfection and mess.  But I am beginning to realise that it is in embracing and wrestling with the mess that we find ourselves.  And in doing so, we find contentment and fulfilment.

 

We are all works in progress.  We are all half-way through the 'sorting out' process.  We are not finished products.  We are being refined and reshaped and recast day after day after day.

 

I'm not sure I have the courage to be imperfect.  But I want to try.

 

I want to be comfortable living in the mess, because that's where the life is.

 

 

 

 

Deep Clean

I am now back home after six days at Momentum.  And I am clean.  Properly, deeply, glowingly clean.  I have had the longest shower and have scrubbed and lathered and rinsed away all of the mud and dirt.   I have detoxed and I have deep-conditioned.

I am clean.

This morning, knowing that I would have a proper shower when I got back home, I made do with a liberal application of perfume.   Whilst it worked as a temporary fix, I didn't feel properly clean.  My fingernails were muddy from taking down the tent, my hair was  frizzy from the damp and my clothes were creased and crumpled.  The perfume made me feel cleaner, but not properly clean.  

It was a short term fix, but it wasn't a deep clean. 

Sometimes we do the same in life: we are more concerned with sorting out the superficial.  We spray perfume on the situation, rather than giving things a deep clean. 

Jesus spoke of something similar when He criticised the Pharisees for only caring about the appearance of things, for only focusing on the surface:

“What sorrow awaits you teachers of religious law and you Pharisees.  Hypocrites!  For you are so careful to clean the outside of the cup and the dish, but inside you are filthy—full of greed and self-indulgence!  You blind Pharisee! First wash the inside of the cup and the dish, and then the outside will become clean, too [...] you are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside but filled on the inside with dead people’s bones and all sorts of impurity.  Outwardly you look like righteous people, but inwardly your hearts are filled with hypocrisy and lawlessness."

[Matthew 23:25-28 NLT]

 

It is always much easier and less time-consuming or costly to fix the outside of a problem, to give the appearance of having resolved it.  It is always easier to say the right things and pray the 'right' things, to spray perfume instead of washing the inside - cleaning our hearts.  We don't have to make ourselves vulnerable, we don't have to put in much effort and we don't have to face discomfort.

But we are not really clean.

And whilst other people might believe we have really resolved the problem, whilst we ourselves might believe it, God always looks at our hearts.

"The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” 

[1 Samuel 16:7 NLT] 

 

It is more costly and time-consuming and uncomfortable, but cleaning the inside - resolving the heart of the matter - is always worth it. 

Old and New

One of the things that has made camping at Momentum much more bearable is the fact that I know someone with a shower.

A proper shower.

A warm shower, behind a door that locks, for which there is never a queue or a feeling of having to rush so the next person can use it. At Momentum, there is little more one could ask for in a shower.

And so every day I have managed to fit in a shower at some point and have been so grateful to scrub the mud from my body and to feel clean again.

However, after every shower, I have had to walk back to my own tent and, to do that, I have had to put my dirty clothes back on. They're not that dirty, but they're the clothes I had on before I had a shower.

Whilst I'm clean, it doesn't make sense to put old, unclean clothes on.

But how often do we do that as Christians? We have been made clean and have been offered new 'clothes', but we put on the 'clothes' of the old life again.

"You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it ... So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offence. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

[Colossians 3:9-14 MSG]

We have been washed and made clean by Jesus' blood, yet we often return to our old clothes: our old patterns of life, our old thoughts, our old addictions. But that's wrong. God has cleaned us up and has given us a new wardrobe. Let's wear it. Our old clothes have no use anymore.

So whilst I need mine to get back to my tent, in a spiritual sense, our old clothes are redundant.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!"

[2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV]