Monday, April 26, 2010

Clutter

One of the best things when I was in the Navy and a Navy wife was the opportunity to move quite a bit. I liked it. It was stressful but there were new opportunities, new friends to meet, and you didn’t accumulate a lot of stuff because the military would only let you move so much on their nickel.


Well, I’ve been in the house I live in now for over 8 years. This is the longest I have ever lived in one place since I moved away from home at 18. Unfortunately WH and DD don’t like to get rid of things and now things have begun to pile up, wait…I promised myself to always tell the truth on my blog.

All of us have accumulated an enormous amount of things, broken things, out-grown things, things we don’t use, things that are just hanging around for sentimental reasons, and papers. A ton of paper. I an terrible at organizing but I loathe being disorganized. (Yes, I am a living oxymoron). So I’ve blocked it out. I either “don’t see it”, I put it in the garage (the bottomless pit) and I just refuse to deal with it. It’s not getting better, it’s not fixing itself, and I think it might actually be multiplying

And then I got an ah-ha moment.

There are a lot of things in my head and in my heart that have accumulated over my lifetime. I have things inside that are broken, things that I have outgrown and even things that I am holding on to for sentimental reasons. Some things were major, like my abortion, my abuse, and they caused shame and despair and depression. I didn’t think that people would understand, accept, even that I would be judged about my past, about those things in the closets and garages of my mind. I didn’t want to open the doors and clean them out.

But God…

Eventually it became too uncomfortable, too painful to ignore it, to pretend it wasn’t there. I had to open the doors to my heart and the past. Yes there were some who didn’t understand, would have preferred that I just “got over it” and “sucked it up” but there were many more that said, “me too” or “thank you”, and “You aren’t alone Leigh.”

Healing started, slowly, but the healing came, and God redeemed so much of my mistakes and my pain. Isn’t it ironic that it takes overcoming something so big to help you understand how to face the smaller things?

My carpet is something that reminds me constantly that God cares about what I care about. I think the garage and the other “messes” in my house are helping me to understand that I don’t need to try to do it alone, that I can ask for help from others, and in fact, I need to swallow some more of that pride. So I will see if I can find some really organized friends to come over on a Saturday, get a date set, and really attack this. It’s blocking up too much and causing me too much unnecessary stress. It’s time to clean house. I’ve done it in my heart, now I need to do it in my home.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Noise

I used to play volleyball and basketball a long time ago (in a galaxy far, far away). I was center on my basketball team in school. I am 5’8 and according to my great-aunts I was “big-boned” (the southern polite way of saying I was a big girl). But I had a hard time focusing. I couldn’t concentrate on the plays; I couldn’t remember where we were supposed to go. I wasn’t good. I was clumsy and awkward and felt like a bull in a china shop.  

My father played ball in school and he would take me outside and shoot balls for hours. Work on my lay-ups, my foul shots, and the shots from the outside. But come game time and I would be so nervous. There was so much noise and so many distractions (inside my head and out). I worried about what my dad would think, what other people would think, what the other team would think. Good grief. I couldn’t focus. All I could hear was the noise. I couldn’t take it so I quit.  For years I felt like I let my dad down when I didn’t go back out on that court because I couldn’t live up to what I thought he wanted for me.

There has been a lot of noise recently in our house. Noise from the house being disorganized and things out of place, end of school projects for DD and things going on at work. A few weeks ago I went for a physical. My doctor felt something suspicious. Tests were ordered that turned down all the noise around me because IT was so loud. Lesions, is it cancer? Polyps, a mass? I couldn’t focus. I couldn’t focus on work. I couldn’t focus on being a wife, a mother, a daughter or a friend. I couldn’t focus on writing. Too much noise.

People would say to me, “God is in control” and even I would say “God’s got it.” But the noise around me would start to rumble louder. I didn’t want to come here and blog about my doubts, about my fears, about the unknown and so I quit. Too much noise. But I wrote in my head, because unlike basketball or volleyball, writing is my passion. I just couldn’t find it in me to sit down and focus long enough to get it out. I was doing it in my strength and my strength had run out.

We aren’t completely out of the woods yet on the medical tests but all, thus far, have come back negative or benign (God got it. I’m just lumpy). I meet with my surgeon on Thursday to find out our next step.

This past month I realized that Satan will turn up the noise in order to drown out my shouts of praise. He succeeded for a time. I didn’t know how to tune him out. I have stumbled lately, not knowing the plays, not understanding my position in the game. But God is patient and a coach like no other. I am learning to tune out the world and turn down the noise. It’s a slow process. Distractions and drama fight for my attention constantly. Unlike sports, which I thought I had to do to make my daddy proud (I know that’s not true now), I AM passionate about my writing. I am passionate about focusing on what He has done in my life and I am learning to do it in His strength, not mine.   I have to write it down. I have to speak it. It is as necessary to me as breathing.

How is this going to play out? What's my position? I don’t have that figured out yet, but I know I have to focus on each play, listen to my Coach, and remember that we are all on the same team. So put me in Coach, I’m ready to play. The game is far from over, but guess what,  WE WIN.  

Focus.