Cleaning House

My spiritual year can be divided up like the life cycle of a tree.
Season - Tree - My Year
Spring - New Growth - Preparing for the summer's ministry
Summer - Full Bloom - Enjoying the summer's ministry and growth
Autumn - Changing Colors - Evidence of the summer's growth is pretty
Winter - Hibernation - Spiritual desolation and an emotional wasteland

It feels like for almost half of the year, I am starving for God. In the other half of the year, I am overwhelmed by God. I don't really know how to explain it better than that. But it is in that time, where I feel so far from God, that I find myself doing something that I would guess is actually pretty common. My job becomes an idol.

When a friend asks me what I have been up to lately, my answer isn't usually about something that is going on with me anymore. Most likely, it has to do with working on lesson plans or trying to figure out what I am going to do with a particular student. Once in a while, it has to do with something I'm involved with at church, like the handbell choir, children's ministry, or another event at church. Rarely, I'll actually open up and share what has been on my heart. A lot of the time lately, I have been more than a little bit likely to rant shortly after I tell you that I've been busy working on school things. I'll rant on and on about my niece and nephew. Unfortunately, a lot of things have become idols lately. Just listen to me talking and you'll figure that out pretty quickly.

I don't want them to stay as idols, but I struggle to release them.

A lot of my focus on preparing for school lately is necessary. I am teaching marine biology, Bible, and math levels spread from pre-algebra to pre-calculus. Take a guess... that is a lot of work, and I'm still waiting on some of my materials to come in. I still have movies that I need to watch, trips to the library that I need to make, and notes to type up.

Right now, a lot of my activities at church are on a summer hiatus, but will pick up again just after school starts. I'm excited for that, but I'm not sure if I'll be able to keep up with all of them with the increased load at school.

I'm also taking several classes online at the moment. Because being busy is my normal, taking one class just isn't enough.

The kids. I love them dearly. But, to be brutally honest, I need a vacation from them. They have been here almost every other week all summer and their dad has been taking summer classes so that he can finish his degree faster. Unfortunately, my presence has made me the go-to babysitter. This leaves me feeling like I'm being taken advantage of and unable to get much else done.

I look at my desk, my closet, my dresser, my nightstand, the floor of my bedroom and I get overwhelmed. I know the steps to cleaning and organizing, but even making it come down into smaller steps is intimidating. I wish that I knew how to make it less so. I organized my desk recently, and with it came a small touch of satisfaction. Except that even in its most organized form, it still looks incredibly cluttered and it feels awkward to work with. I started trying to tackle all of the spaces in my bedroom yesterday, and by the end of the closet, everything else just looked more overwhelming. Today, I should be working on it more, but I don't even feel like I know where to start.

The concept of cleaning for a few minutes every day as a way to keep the messes to a minimum sounds like a crazy idea to me. It was never really modeled for me growing up, because binge cleaning was considered normal. I guess that is what happens when both parents work full time. It is how I learned to do it though. I will admit that I miss cranking up the stereo and singing along with the radio while I worked.

I miss fresh country air now. And sunlight. (Yes, I know that it is August and that there is plenty of sunlight outside even in the suburbs.) I miss opening up the house and airing it out. It always seemed cleaner that way. Plus, it was easier to clean when you weren't getting high on the chemical fumes.

So maybe I'm just overwhelmed and homesick and practicing a lot of procrastination lately. And somehow it is spilling over into my spiritual life.

I suppose that I should go and at least find the floor on my half of the bedroom. Because my husband's half is already clean. He's organized and neat like that.