Opening boxes yields benefits, especially when you open dozens of boxes into which someone else has packed your stuff.
How does such a dreaded task benefit you? Let me count the ways.
1) You find things you haven’t seen in years. You discover items that months of active closet cleaning did not reveal.
Happily, you welcome beloved belongings previously given up as lost. Happily, you toss items you thought you trashed long ago, wishing only that you had not paid to cart them several hundred miles. A bit sadly, you dispose of three unopened packages of 10-year-old wallpaper border that matched the yellow gingham bed linens you just gave away.
2) You find things you didn’t know you had. If your spouse has a mechanical bent, you find tools you didn’t know existed.
3) You see your stuff in a new light. Knowing a stranger has not only eyeballed, but handled, every item you pull from every box, you realize two men who interacted with you for two days know more about your family than you know about yourselves.
You begin to see your stuff through their eyes. You begin to see your life through their eyes. How embarrassing! How enlightening!
4) You get physical exercise. Packing tape doesn’t yield to wimps. Lifting boxes, getting into those boxes, lifting things out of boxes, unwrapping breakables from reams of paper, flattening boxes and carting them to the street, moving items from room to room, then moving them again, and again – you create your own cardio and body-building program. Your abs thank you.
5) You get mental exercise. In fact, your creativity may soar. You may find yourself writing profound song lyrics such as these, sung to the tune of “Somewhere” from the movie, West Side Story:
“There’s a place for you,
Somewhere a place for you,
Place for storing with space to spare.
There’s a place
Somewhere.”
Releasing creativity to its full potential, you admit the place for some things lies in someone else’s home. When you find yourself holding an item and humming, “There’s a time for you, Someday a time for you,” walk quickly to the giveaway box and insert the item before you can reconsider. As in the movie West Side Story, someday usually means “not in this lifetime.”
Soaring creativity also depends on your reminding yourself, “This is a new place and a new season.” Your human default setting will try to recreate the old – to put stuff where it fit or worked or occupied space in the last season. Change that setting.
You now live in a place with differently configured space. You may still want to put the dining room table in the dining room. However, tastefully scrambling your stuff can go a long way toward creating a dramatic home makeover. What’s more, changes can make things more functional. Previously, you put certain items in certain places out of habit, even though the locations did not help you accomplish things the most efficient way.
Now, think before you set. As you open that box, while you unwrap each item, don’t mentally place it in the most familiar setting. Let your mind flow through the house – rooms, closets, drawers – and see if that item fits best in the same place as before or a new place altogether.
Galatians 6, the Message, urges: “Each of you must take responsibility for doing the creative best you can with your own life.” Indeed, whatever dreaded jobs you’re tackling, “Live creatively, friends.”
If that sounds impossible to you, utterly out of reach, hold God’s hand and he’ll take you there.
© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.
. . . . . . .
Real lyrics to “Somewhere” can be found at http://www.westsidestory.com/site/level2/lyrics/somewhere.html
Music by Leonard Bernstein, lyrics by Stephen Sondheim.
© 1956, 1957 Amberson Holdings LLC and Stephen Sondheim. Copyright renewed.
Leonard Bernstein Music Publishing Company LLC, Publisher.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
Laying foundations
Gas logs burn in the fireplace. A clock lying on the counter ticks. Tall windows display a hillside arrayed with tall trees.
Our gray cat sleeps in the brown rocker by the window. A yellow neighbor cat sleeps on a stool sitting outside the same window.
Newly placed furniture vies for floor space with stacked boxes and miscellaneous items just unpacked. A lamp base without shade occupies the carpet near an overstuffed chair. A lamp shade without base rests on the coffee table.
Yesterday I organized a kitchen with far fewer cabinets and drawers than our previous kitchen. Even with all the giving away and throwing away we did before the move, along with the handy-dandy organizer units I found and the new donation boxes started, several needed kitchen items still cry for homes.
A houseful of windows cry for coverings.
Much remains to be done – so much that, if I do not consider one room at a time, one task at a time, the job overwhelms me. This assignment requires energy, tenacity, creativity. This assignment has nothing to do with my purpose in this place – and everything to do with it.
Some tasks lay foundations for other tasks. For example, bathing and brushing your teeth have nothing to do with your purpose for any given day, but doing them sets you up for greater success in accomplishing the day’s purposes, especially when those purposes involve relating to other people.
How important to do foundational tasks well! How crucial to making other tasks easier!
The last time we moved, our family of four included two teenagers, a traveling husband and a working mom. We tried valiantly to organize things. Yet, bowing to crowded schedules, we relegated such duties to minutes stolen here and there, often late at night, over a period of months. Exhaustion, confusion and haste do not wise choices make.
Only in the last three years, as God has begun reordering my life, have I realized how greatly the helter-skelter arrangement of our closets, cupboards and drawers handicapped us. Because we didn’t know where to find things, we spent much time hunting, often with great frustration. We bought many duplicates.
Some tasks pave the way for accomplishing other tasks with ease. Because these foundational tasks don’t usually have deadlines, we may let more urgent responsibilities crowd them out. Doing so makes our lives more complicated, more frustrating, less restful and less fruitful.
Proverbs 24:3-4 says, “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.”
Right now, I sit, watching the trees stand peacefully outside the windows and the fire flicker within. The gray cat that previously slept in the brown rocker has padded over to lie in my lap. Already, I’m enjoying rare and beautiful treasures.
Knowing my husband and I will build a life here, I ask God for wisdom and understanding to begin it well. In a few minutes, alert to whatever insights God will give, I’ll open another box.
© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.
Our gray cat sleeps in the brown rocker by the window. A yellow neighbor cat sleeps on a stool sitting outside the same window.
Newly placed furniture vies for floor space with stacked boxes and miscellaneous items just unpacked. A lamp base without shade occupies the carpet near an overstuffed chair. A lamp shade without base rests on the coffee table.
Yesterday I organized a kitchen with far fewer cabinets and drawers than our previous kitchen. Even with all the giving away and throwing away we did before the move, along with the handy-dandy organizer units I found and the new donation boxes started, several needed kitchen items still cry for homes.
A houseful of windows cry for coverings.
Much remains to be done – so much that, if I do not consider one room at a time, one task at a time, the job overwhelms me. This assignment requires energy, tenacity, creativity. This assignment has nothing to do with my purpose in this place – and everything to do with it.
Some tasks lay foundations for other tasks. For example, bathing and brushing your teeth have nothing to do with your purpose for any given day, but doing them sets you up for greater success in accomplishing the day’s purposes, especially when those purposes involve relating to other people.
How important to do foundational tasks well! How crucial to making other tasks easier!
The last time we moved, our family of four included two teenagers, a traveling husband and a working mom. We tried valiantly to organize things. Yet, bowing to crowded schedules, we relegated such duties to minutes stolen here and there, often late at night, over a period of months. Exhaustion, confusion and haste do not wise choices make.
Only in the last three years, as God has begun reordering my life, have I realized how greatly the helter-skelter arrangement of our closets, cupboards and drawers handicapped us. Because we didn’t know where to find things, we spent much time hunting, often with great frustration. We bought many duplicates.
Some tasks pave the way for accomplishing other tasks with ease. Because these foundational tasks don’t usually have deadlines, we may let more urgent responsibilities crowd them out. Doing so makes our lives more complicated, more frustrating, less restful and less fruitful.
Proverbs 24:3-4 says, “By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.”
Right now, I sit, watching the trees stand peacefully outside the windows and the fire flicker within. The gray cat that previously slept in the brown rocker has padded over to lie in my lap. Already, I’m enjoying rare and beautiful treasures.
Knowing my husband and I will build a life here, I ask God for wisdom and understanding to begin it well. In a few minutes, alert to whatever insights God will give, I’ll open another box.
© 2008, Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Room revelation
My room is a mess.
Okay, so the fact might not shock you. A 19-year-old college student, I live out of three locations (the university dorms, my four-door Grand Am and the upstairs bedroom in my parents house). Usually when my bedroom crosses the fine line between controlled chaos and outright catastrophe, my parents teasingly say a tornado seems to have exclusively hit my room.
But if previous messes were tornado-induced, my latest one must have been caused by earthquake, tsunami, and blizzard.
After living on campus last school year, I moved home for the summer while taking classes and working. Six weeks after moving back from the dorms, I still had not unpacked from my dorm room, and the chaos increased by the day. When I finally began clearing my room, it was time to start packing anew – this time for a semester-long overseas trip.
My future plans suggest this could be my last long stint at home, so I’m now undertaking the spring cleanings missed since 2002.
I’ve dusted and vacuumed regularly over the years, but my pack-rat nature has prevented me from disposing of the junk that’s found its way into my living space. Years of clutter have created quite a catastrophe. Now, my hallway, bathroom, closets, and cabinets are caught in the crossfire of a relentless cleaning campaign.
Even after I filled five garbage bags with trash and several others with donations, my room seems messier than ever. I didn’t realize it had the capacity to hold everything I’ve just thrown away, much less the items I use daily! Now that the trash is gone, I still have plenty of work ahead of me.
In the midst of a room renovation, I began to realize something else needed cleaning – my life.
For years I mulled the Bible verse where Paul admonishes Christians to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). His statement seemed to contradict another verse in which Paul states that one is saved by grace through faith, not by works (Eph. 2:8-9). Why must we work out our salvation if salvation is not through works?
Why must we continually clean the houses we live in?
Life accumulates clutter. Constant care and effort are needed to maintain a state of order in our hearts. We cannot simply reorganize the junk that clutters our lives. We must trash the garbage or outdated stuff that collects over time.
Everyday happenings – encounters, conversations, emotions, events – fill our lives with memories. Even good experiences can bring in baggage. A regular cleaning of all aspects of our lives – sorting, washing, even disposing – keeps us in order, effective and ready to receive fresh things the Lord has for us to learn.
I’ve made progress in disposing of some baggage that ties me down, but still have a long way to go. As soon as I get everything cleared, something new introduces itself into my life. Each new experience must be evaluated and organized in light of God’s word.
I imagine this process as the constant effort to which Paul refers when he speaks of working out our salvation. A clean life stays that way only if it’s constantly being cleaned.
Despite my latest and greatest efforts, my living space remains a mess. I just pray to God that my life stays clean.
. . . . . . .
Amanda Brunt, youngest daughter of regular Perspective author Deborah Brunt, guest-wrote this column in August 2007, while Deborah was traveling in India and Sri Lanka. Then, Amanda traveled to Cairo, Egypt, for a semester of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies, returning stateside in mid-December. Before she left, Amanda did succeed in cleaning her room.
© 2007, Amanda Brunt. All rights reserved.
Okay, so the fact might not shock you. A 19-year-old college student, I live out of three locations (the university dorms, my four-door Grand Am and the upstairs bedroom in my parents house). Usually when my bedroom crosses the fine line between controlled chaos and outright catastrophe, my parents teasingly say a tornado seems to have exclusively hit my room.
But if previous messes were tornado-induced, my latest one must have been caused by earthquake, tsunami, and blizzard.
After living on campus last school year, I moved home for the summer while taking classes and working. Six weeks after moving back from the dorms, I still had not unpacked from my dorm room, and the chaos increased by the day. When I finally began clearing my room, it was time to start packing anew – this time for a semester-long overseas trip.
My future plans suggest this could be my last long stint at home, so I’m now undertaking the spring cleanings missed since 2002.
I’ve dusted and vacuumed regularly over the years, but my pack-rat nature has prevented me from disposing of the junk that’s found its way into my living space. Years of clutter have created quite a catastrophe. Now, my hallway, bathroom, closets, and cabinets are caught in the crossfire of a relentless cleaning campaign.
Even after I filled five garbage bags with trash and several others with donations, my room seems messier than ever. I didn’t realize it had the capacity to hold everything I’ve just thrown away, much less the items I use daily! Now that the trash is gone, I still have plenty of work ahead of me.
In the midst of a room renovation, I began to realize something else needed cleaning – my life.
For years I mulled the Bible verse where Paul admonishes Christians to work out their salvation with fear and trembling (Phil 2:12). His statement seemed to contradict another verse in which Paul states that one is saved by grace through faith, not by works (Eph. 2:8-9). Why must we work out our salvation if salvation is not through works?
Why must we continually clean the houses we live in?
Life accumulates clutter. Constant care and effort are needed to maintain a state of order in our hearts. We cannot simply reorganize the junk that clutters our lives. We must trash the garbage or outdated stuff that collects over time.
Everyday happenings – encounters, conversations, emotions, events – fill our lives with memories. Even good experiences can bring in baggage. A regular cleaning of all aspects of our lives – sorting, washing, even disposing – keeps us in order, effective and ready to receive fresh things the Lord has for us to learn.
I’ve made progress in disposing of some baggage that ties me down, but still have a long way to go. As soon as I get everything cleared, something new introduces itself into my life. Each new experience must be evaluated and organized in light of God’s word.
I imagine this process as the constant effort to which Paul refers when he speaks of working out our salvation. A clean life stays that way only if it’s constantly being cleaned.
Despite my latest and greatest efforts, my living space remains a mess. I just pray to God that my life stays clean.
. . . . . . .
Amanda Brunt, youngest daughter of regular Perspective author Deborah Brunt, guest-wrote this column in August 2007, while Deborah was traveling in India and Sri Lanka. Then, Amanda traveled to Cairo, Egypt, for a semester of Arabic and Middle Eastern studies, returning stateside in mid-December. Before she left, Amanda did succeed in cleaning her room.
© 2007, Amanda Brunt. All rights reserved.
Thursday, February 7, 2008
Olive Branch
Where’s a camera when you need one?
I sit cross-legged on tan carpet in an almost-empty upstairs room, facing a large window. Outside, a grove of tall trees with black-and-white bark lift their spindly branches high. The afternoon sun shining through bare treetops throws its light, and the window frames’ shadow, onto the bare wall to my right.
Behind me, against another wall, a solitary blue trunk lies open, most of its contents not yet unpacked.
Before me, a plastic under-bed storage box serves as a low table. On it, sets a wooden bed tray with legs. Today, the bed tray doubles as laptop computer stand. I’m typing on the computer that sits atop the angled tray, while our gray cat Pewter lies in the cubbyhole between wooden tray and plastic box.
Happily, I can type and stroke my cat at the same time.
The scene won’t linger long. Imperceptibly but relentlessly, the sun moves lower. Soon, Pewter will finish her nap and set out to explore more of this strange new place. She’ll jump up immediately if I go downstairs to get the camera.
The room will remain mostly bare a few days longer. Then, boxes and furniture will fill it, daring me to find places for them all.
How fitting that a relocation set in motion in mid-September – the first month of the Jewish calendar – should consummate in January, the first month of the Roman calendar. The weeks between have seemed as suspended as the afternoon sun. Yet the days have moved inexorably forward, ushering my husband and me into a new season in a new place.
How fitting that the place should be named Olive Branch.
In another era entirely, Noah transitioned to a new season in a new place. It took time. On a day God designated, Noah, his family and a zoo-full of animals entered a barge-like ark, leaving forever the life they had known. The ark protected its passengers through 40 days and 40 nights of cataclysmic flood and carried them a total of five months before resting on a mountaintop.
Even then, Noah and party didn’t climb out and go their way. For another 40 days, Noah simply waited. Then, he sent a raven, followed by a dove, on exploratory missions.
The dove proved the more reliable scout. First mission: Unable to land, the dove returned. Third mission: Finding a perch somewhere besides a dark, smelly, filled-to-capacity boat, the dove did not come back.
Ah, but when the dove returned from its second mission, Noah surely wondered, “Where’s a camera when you need one?” Genesis 8:11 says, “When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf!”
Can’t you hear Noah hollering to his wife, “Get the camera, honey! It’s finally happened! The waters have receded! We won’t have to wait long now!”
Much transition lay ahead for Noah’s clan. A week later, when the dove did not come back, they opened the covering of the ark – then stayed put nearly two more months. The day they stepped out the ark’s door, more than a year after entering it, the family began the daunting process of acclimating to a strange new world.
It’s obvious, though, from the way they passed the story down, that they snapped a picture – even without camera. The rest of their days, when life seemed stuck and hope, suspended, they carried in their hearts the image of that dove, winging toward them at evening, carrying a leaf plucked from an olive branch.
© 2008 Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.
I sit cross-legged on tan carpet in an almost-empty upstairs room, facing a large window. Outside, a grove of tall trees with black-and-white bark lift their spindly branches high. The afternoon sun shining through bare treetops throws its light, and the window frames’ shadow, onto the bare wall to my right.
Behind me, against another wall, a solitary blue trunk lies open, most of its contents not yet unpacked.
Before me, a plastic under-bed storage box serves as a low table. On it, sets a wooden bed tray with legs. Today, the bed tray doubles as laptop computer stand. I’m typing on the computer that sits atop the angled tray, while our gray cat Pewter lies in the cubbyhole between wooden tray and plastic box.
Happily, I can type and stroke my cat at the same time.
The scene won’t linger long. Imperceptibly but relentlessly, the sun moves lower. Soon, Pewter will finish her nap and set out to explore more of this strange new place. She’ll jump up immediately if I go downstairs to get the camera.
The room will remain mostly bare a few days longer. Then, boxes and furniture will fill it, daring me to find places for them all.
How fitting that a relocation set in motion in mid-September – the first month of the Jewish calendar – should consummate in January, the first month of the Roman calendar. The weeks between have seemed as suspended as the afternoon sun. Yet the days have moved inexorably forward, ushering my husband and me into a new season in a new place.
How fitting that the place should be named Olive Branch.
In another era entirely, Noah transitioned to a new season in a new place. It took time. On a day God designated, Noah, his family and a zoo-full of animals entered a barge-like ark, leaving forever the life they had known. The ark protected its passengers through 40 days and 40 nights of cataclysmic flood and carried them a total of five months before resting on a mountaintop.
Even then, Noah and party didn’t climb out and go their way. For another 40 days, Noah simply waited. Then, he sent a raven, followed by a dove, on exploratory missions.
The dove proved the more reliable scout. First mission: Unable to land, the dove returned. Third mission: Finding a perch somewhere besides a dark, smelly, filled-to-capacity boat, the dove did not come back.
Ah, but when the dove returned from its second mission, Noah surely wondered, “Where’s a camera when you need one?” Genesis 8:11 says, “When the dove returned to him in the evening, there in its beak was a freshly plucked olive leaf!”
Can’t you hear Noah hollering to his wife, “Get the camera, honey! It’s finally happened! The waters have receded! We won’t have to wait long now!”
Much transition lay ahead for Noah’s clan. A week later, when the dove did not come back, they opened the covering of the ark – then stayed put nearly two more months. The day they stepped out the ark’s door, more than a year after entering it, the family began the daunting process of acclimating to a strange new world.
It’s obvious, though, from the way they passed the story down, that they snapped a picture – even without camera. The rest of their days, when life seemed stuck and hope, suspended, they carried in their hearts the image of that dove, winging toward them at evening, carrying a leaf plucked from an olive branch.
© 2008 Deborah P. Brunt. All rights reserved.
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