spring cleaning
It will look worse before it looks better.
Spring cleaning in early summer (because it takes me weeks to find the sabbatical I’ve been chasing), and this I keep reminding myself while making dinner on a tiny slice of counter top in the kitchen. In the background, the collection of pitchers I pushed back to make the space; to my left, the pantry staples—removed to clear, stackable containers—for which I’ve yet to create a thoughtful spot. Reorganization takes time.
Yesterday, I finished the girls’ room. I had meant to get in there and sort, remove the things they’ve out grown, before Christmas and birthdays. Late, as usual, I discovered that the boxes and stacks, the where-do-I-put-this piles had overwhelmed my daughters until they gave up hope. Gradually, they began to let all the daily maintenance slide too, until I reminded them that beds should be made first thing, dirty clothes should be sorted in the hampers, clean clothes should be neatly stowed in drawers. It seemed as though every day Zoe told me she’d accidentally stepped on some thing in the floor—but hadn’t broken it—or, well, not completely. Earrings were lost, and I could easily see why, looking at the knot of jewelry, make-up, and hair ornaments spreading across the smooth surface of the bureau. And beneath the mess, a layer of dust turned all the pretty furniture dull.
Times like these, I know clean can only come again with help.
And organization comes easily to me.
Zoe longed for a creative space, so I started near the window, at the desk. I opened every drawer and sorted—things to keep, things to give away, things to discard. Then everything worth keeping I sorted further—things that belong in the desk, things that belong somewhere else in the room, things that belong somewhere else in the house. I wiped and polished surfaces, then I checked underneath and behind—pulling out random things fallen and forgotten. These things cleaned and sorted, I filled the drawers with what made sense, bringing in art supplies I had collected from other places in the house, things that had been waiting to be stored in Zoe’s creative space. Thoughtfully, I arranged and rearranged, creating a system that would make sense to Zoe and one she could maintain neatly with quick, minimal effort.
I arranged and rearranged decorative items and things my daughter needed within easy reach until the surface looked artsy, pretty, and functional, leaving a nice, wide, clean work space. Then I turned my attention to the reading area—the comfy, apricot-colored chair too cluttered with stuffed animals for sitting; the book shelves so over-packed that books fell off of stacks thrown haphazardly atop the horizontal line of spines. And all the while, in the center of the room and in my office too, dislodged items sat crookedly in unconquered territory.
It all looked a lot worse before it looked better.
But I took my time, moving around the room space by space, toting boxes to the car for a trip to Good Will, hefting trash bags outside to the trash can. The girls lived around the perimeter of ground zero, occasionally missing something I’d stowed in my office for safe keeping. The more progress I made, the more the girls looked forward to walking into the room after school. If a day passed and I couldn’t work in the room, Riley mentioned it immediately. “Mom? You didn’t clean in our room today?”
Order produces a different kind of freedom, a freedom much different than the wild, rule-thwarting abandonment to chaos and clutter our adolescence attaches so firmly to that word. This freedom clears away a vision of beauty. It breeds unencumbered, unfettered gratitude. It throws off everything that hinders function, creativity, invention. This freedom makes movement easy, quick. It carves out room to dance without stumbling.
But it looks worse before it looks better.
I smiled, thinking of this, as I walked in the room one day seeing only what I had accomplished. My eyes floated over the newly reorganized places, the spots where I’d worked for hours–digging, cleaning, sorting, creating, solving.
“Isn’t it looking great?” I asked Zoe, who sat at the desk refining a sketch of a dolphin. She’d called me in there to see the tail, which she described as “not quite right, but better,” claiming that it needed more roundness here, a sharp angle there.
Zoe looked behind her, resting her eyes on the mess in the center of the room, the boxes and bags untouched, the items displaced. She sighed audibly, for emphasis. “I guess. But there’s that. I feel like we’ll never know what to do with that stuff. And I keep stepping on it, even though I don’t mean to. I mean, I try not to.” All that work, and still all she could see were the spaces I’d yet to transform.
Zoe turned back around, pressing her pencil again to the paper, but I walked up behind her and put my hand on her shoulder. “Now wait just a minute. I am not finished in here. Just be patient. It looks worse before it looks better. But can’t you see it starting to take shape? Can’t you see I’ve been hard at work?”
And then it happened, as it always does. I say these things to my children, touching them, seizing a teachable moment, and I feel the gentle nudge of the Spirit, the Father coming up behind me, His hand resting firmly. And then I know, the goosebumps traveling up my spine, that this—this unfair, incomplete appraisal of things—this is how it always is with me and Him.
Months pass, and life too busy and fast overwhelms my soul, cluttering my heart with so much out of place and where do I put this that I feel like I can barely breathe. I don’t know where to begin without Him. I become so out of sorts that even the daily maintenance of holy spaces becomes lost to me. I begin to misplace the important, to step on tender things without meaning to do it.
He hears me calling out in my distress (Psalm 116:1; but scripture is replete…more often than not the word cry in any tense comes followed closely with He hears). He always hears. He always cares. He always loves. He is father running. Into the dust-laden, trash-strewn spaces where I live, He comes. He abides there hour by hour, breathing for me, sorting—what must be kept, what must be given away, what must be discarded. He recreates, reorganizes, renews, making sense of it all for me, opening up a space for me to dance without stumbling. He wraps me in love, delighted with His work, and says, “It’s looking good, isn’t it?”
And I lift my eyes, and I rest them on the tattered remains of something yet to be transformed, some burden I’m still carrying, something awaiting His redeeming, healing touch, and I sigh for Him so that He knows I see it, feel it, still there, and I say, “I guess. But there’s still that. I feel like I’ll never know what to do with that. Like it will always be there. And I keep stepping on it by accident.”
And He turns me to face Him, makes me look at Him fully with my unsheltered eyes, all my unhidden, vulnerable tears, the full gust of passionate love between us, and He says,
“Now wait just a minute. I’m not finished yet. Be patient. It’ll look a whole lot worse before it looks better. Oh Beloved, can’t you see that I’m hard at work?“
Forget the former things;/do not dwell on the past./See, I am doing a new thing!/Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?/I am making a way in the desert/and streams in the wasteland (Isaiah 43: 18,19).
