Closets

I've cleaned a lot of closets lately.

My fingers fumble along the rows of junk stacked up on shelves, and I grab and rearrange and pitch and stack until everything looks organized and nice and neat.  Until I can see everything that's there and know where everything is and feel like every nook and cranny has been de-junked and put back together. 

It was something I had to do this week.  Like the closets were pulling me in by some force that over powered the stacks of dishes and the packing for Disney and the soul searching.  Everything fell to the back burner because there was this crazed need to CLEAN THE CLOSETS RIGHT NOW.

And it wasn't until I stepped back and admired my third pristine closet that I realized why I needed to clean them. 

I had to clean closets because cleaning a three foot by two foot closet was something I could control. It was something I could do.  I could clear it out from top to bottom, organize every shelf and corner, and then step back and admire the clean cut and straight forward peace of the space.

I had to clean closets because in the past several days, my fingers have been fumbling through my heart, trying to organize the shelves and dig into the corners, and I've come away frustrated.  Unable to find every nook and cranny.  Why have I not felt like writing? Unsure of where to place the pieces that were wandering from shelf to shelf.  What do I do with the minutes of my day now that she's not here? Incapable of determining which way was up and which way was down and whether or not that book should even be there.  What's up with feeling this deep, certain and steadfast joy, but being bummed out and mopey sometimes at the same time?

Where does all this stuff go and how do I clean this thing out and make sense of it all?

I realized my heart was a bruised and battered mess after the challenge of the past several months, and while I was desperate to clean it up and make sense of all the bits and pieces- put them each in their place and stand back and admire the finished product- I realized I couldn't do it.  The closets in my heart were just too confusing and too overwhelming and too messy.  So I dropped everything where it was and decided to clean some tangible closets.  Because that I could do.

When I saw my fingers fumbling along the piles of junk and sorting through the books and baskets, I realized fumbling along the piles is what I had been doing in my own heart.  An unreachable result, but one I had been fumbling to find anyway.  Because I don't like messy closets.  I don't like not being able to determine whats there and being able to sweep out the corners and organize the mess.

My heart is just such a mess.

Then I heard Him.  As my brow furrowed and I cried out in frustration, trying to pin down exactly what was going on in the incredibly messy closet of my heart, His voice whispered and He came up behind me and put His hand on my shoulder, gently pulling me back from the mess: "Beloved, let me do it.  This is a closet you can't clean.  I've got it.  Let me pick up the pieces and put them in the right place.  Don't worry about the why's and the what's and the how's.  Don't worry about what to do and what to say and where to be.  Just be still and know that I am God.  I'll take care of the rest.  I'm good with battered and bruised, Beloved.  I've got this."

So instead of fumbling through the mess, fingers frantic and desperate to make sense of it all, I'm sitting back.  I'm planting myself on the floor, stilling my fluttering fingers, taking a deep breath, and just letting Him do His thing.

I was talking with my dad a few nights ago about this cleaning of closets.  This trying to sort through my heart and trying to figure out whats what and questioning my peace and the joy I have despite my awful circumstances.  I was grappling with the mixed feelings of joy and sorrow and hurt and healing, trying to put each in its place and explain why what should go where. He told me to stop trying to figure it all out.  To just be.  To let the feelings come as they come and to stop trying to place things on the right shelf and sort through what should be there and what shouldn't because God would provide and the peace I was trying to sort through was simply His provision. Not something to be placed on a shelf and sorted through, but something to be left alone.  To just be.  I didn't realize it at the time, but he was telling me to stop trying to clean the closet.  To just let God do His thing and to trust the process.  Trust that God is a better closet cleaner than I am, that He knows my heart better than I do, and to step back and let Him do His work in me.

That was three days ago.  I was still trying to clean closets. 

Then last night, I poured my soul out to a dear friend on the phone- all about how I'm so frustrated that I don't know what to write anymore. That I want so much to describe where I'm at but that I can't because I don't know.  And because it changes all the time.  I want to write about all thing wonderful things God has done and each of His fingerprints we've seen on Jubilee's story and since her birthday, but each time I try I freeze up. I don't always know what I'm feeling or how to put words to the thousands of things going through my mind every day. I don't question God's love or His goodness or His plan, but the whole thing just runs so deep that I can't make sense of it.  Everything in the closet is just so stinking heavy.  Its hard to move it from one place to another or figure out what it is in the first place.  I told her that sometimes all I want to talk about or write about is how we just hammered down the last of our Girl Scout cookie stash and how I'm not sure if I should take two bottles of sunscreen to Disney or three.  And do you know what she said?  She said write about it.  She told me the same thing my dad did just days before: stop cleaning the closet and just let Him do His work in me.  And write about it.  All of it. The frustration, the changing feelings, the blood and the sweat and the tears and the cookies and the sunscreen.  She told me to stop trying to figure it all out and make it right and just write about where I'm at. 

So that's what I'm doing.  It took me a while to get here...to stop fidgeting with all the stuff in the closet and to just step back and let God clean it out and make sense of it all as I rest and watch and be still and just know that He is God.

Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times and in every way.

2 Thessalonians 3:16

I'm writing today about where I'm at.  Yesterday I was cleaning closets.  Today I'm letting Him do the cleaning.  Letting Him give me peace. I'm breathing easier because when I am still, I know that He is God and that He's got this. 

And I'm absolutely taking three bottles of sunscreen to Disney.  =)