Man, did I hit the wall yesterday or what? I have not faced that level of sheer depression for a long while.
A friend of ours told us about this church in California where the pastor challenged everyone to get rid of all but 100 things (not including furniture & necessities) in order to live more simply and have more time to do the things God is calling them to do. I don't think I could pare things down that far...
All night the other night I kept waking up hearing, "100 things, 100 things." It was eerily reminiscent of the newspaper boy on the movie Better Off Dead: "Two dollars, I want my two dollars!" as he stalked John Cusak's character on his bmx bike chanting the refrain over and over.
"I can't do it! Leave me alone! Leave me alone! I'm trying to sleep!"
No wonder I felt like crap the next day.
Because we are now having to show the house ("Hi! Welcome to the bat cave!") we kind of need to clear out a lot of this crap. I've been going through Peter Walsh's book & workbook, It's All Too Much! in order to keep myself on track. He's the guy who has been on the show Clean Sweep and he's also been on Oprah helping some of those hardcore hoarders clean out their homes. Walsh says: My clients say things like, "I was buried under all that stuff," "I was drowning," "I feel like I'm suffocating." We use those metaphors because clutter robs us of life. It robs us socially, when we're too embarrassed to have people over. It robs us spiritually, because we can't be at peace in a cluttered home. And it robs us psychologically, by stealing our ability to feel motivated in our space.
I couldn't agree more- after awhile it starts to take psychic bites our of your soul. I read the book, The Alchemist, a couple weeks ago and when I sat down to journal about it a few days later I realized that I had "lost myself" so to speak, and couldn't even remember what my dreams were. It might sound weird but I have literally gotten lost in all of the excessive clutter in my home. I don't work well in a messy environment. Even when I cook, I usually do all the dishes first and straighten up my workspace.
Not only do we need to show the house but I also want to get all this done before the baby is born because I know it's not gonna happen then. I guess it just started to feel completely overwhelming. Being the firstborn perfectionist that I am, it's even worse.
The only thing I wrote for a journal entry yesterday was:
"How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time."
Now I need to go get rid of 100 things and peg that newspaper boy with a BB gun.
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3 comments:
What can I say... other then I love you! You are not alone I am with you in your head and in your inner most spirit... I feel your pain... this to will pass trust me... There are times in every life when we feel hurt or alone... But I believe that these times when we feel lost and all around us seems to be falling apart are really bridges of growth. We struggle and try to recapture the security of what was... but almost in spite of ourselves... we emerge on the other side with a new understanding, a new strength. It is almost as though we must go through the pain and the struggle in order to grow and reach new heights... I love you... Auntie Leilani....
One of the best movies of all time.
Maria is pretty much an obsessive purger, which is just fine with me. I purge all the time, too. I recently moved into a bigger office at work, with more filing cabinets... guess what? They are all empty, too.
When our PC died and I had to back up everything, I went on a purging binge (um... bear with me). Like, six years of stored emails deleted. So what? I hadn't looked at them in six years. I was unlikely to look at them six years from now.
I think part of the beauty of a clean space, an uncluttered home, is that it forces you to let go of certain things. Live in the now. The now can be so much more enjoyable if it isn't burdened with baggage from the past or expectations of the future.
Good luck with it all. And I wish I could have been on the visit last week with M & the boys.
AMEN!
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