Saturday, April 9, 2011

Finding God In The Closet Organizer

I feel as though I’ve been moving FOREVER! You see at the end of January everything I owned went into storage and I moved into my new husband’s apartment. We took possession of a house at the end of February and the real fun began!  To say the house needed “a little” work is like saying Canadian winters are “a little” cool! Every spare, waking moment of the first two weeks was spent repairing damaged dry wall, hanging new dry wall, mudding and sanding. But finally the dust settled – literally – (we’re still finding dry wall dust EVERYWHERE) and on March 18 moving day arrived.  Now we faced the challenge of combining two households into one. We have two of everything – microwaves, bar-b-q’s, kitchen tables, desks – can you say “garage sale”! It’s now April 10 and we both feel like we’ve been slaves for the last two months! My husband’s going to college during the day, I’m working a full time job and in the evening we both come home and make feeble attempts to unpack, sort, organize and generally wage war on the chaos that has become our domestic life! We’re finally making progress – last night we took back the territory called the hallway and can now walk down it without tripping through the obstacle course!

Of course in the midst of this I’m still trying to stay in close relationship with God.  If you’ve ever dealt with a crazy, chaotic time in your life, and let’s face it...who hasn’t, you’ll appreciate just how difficult this can be. I make my tea, settle into a the lovely sunny corner in the living room with my Bible, spend half an hour reading, close the Book and realize I haven’t got a clue what I just read! I try to pray and spend quiet time in God’s presence...I stop talking, close my eyes, breathe deeply, relax, focus on hearing God’s voice, and what springs to mind? The closet organizer – how practical is the closet organizer?!? Sure it looks like a good idea, but the top shelves are too high to reach and there’s not enough space in between the lower shelves to hang pants and skirts!  Crap, focus...want to spend time in God’s presence...OK, relax.  Wait the shower rod...I need to hang the curved shower rod, but the expandable ones don’t hang right and the other one costs $70.00...OK back to prayer time.  God, I really need your help here, my brain is all over the place!  Help me focus on spending time in your presence. Wait, the back gate – the latch needs to be replaced – have to remember to put that on the list...

Do you find yourself having prayer time that sounds similar to this? That’s just a quick running sampling of a two to three minute session of me trying to clear my mind and focus my thoughts on God. It continues but I won’t force you to spend more time in my mind than strictly necessary! Finally I give up and in desperation cry out to God telling Him how badly I need His help in this. I long to be in His presence but my brain just doesn’t want to shut out the realities of life! I guess I need to keep trying but perhaps taking some “time outs” along the way to do something other than work and organize the house might help, too.  Maybe a nice relaxing bath, losing myself in a good book, or spending time knitting or baking will go a long way in helping me settle down and focus again. In the mean time I write this posting in hopes of alleviating some of my current frustrations by sharing them with you.

Please share some of your thoughts on what distracts you in prayer time by clicking on “comments” below.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

First off, congratulations on the new home! Although in an apartment, when my husband and I moved into the first place we picked together, I remember how exciting/overwhelming/chaotic it all felt. Just this morning I found myself chuckling while in the restroom, as it's turned into my makeshift prayer closet!

Great entry! I've been stopping by the blogs of folks who post on SCL and I'm glad I've visited yours!

~~ Ashley
http://thespiritednerd.wordpress.com

Carol Henders said...

Thanks for your comments, Ashley. I can totally relate to the quiet time in the restroom! Sometimes you just have to take whatever time you can get!