Beauty on the Backroads

Stories of grace for life's unexpected turns

work in progress

Unfinished work

Last month, I started cleaning our house. This may not be a revelatory experience for any of you, but for me, active, purposeful cleaning is new. I’m more of a clean-up-after-messes-or-when-company’s-coming-over kind of gal. But I finally got to the point where I felt like our living space was contributing negatively to my mood. I’m not talking Feng Shui or furniture arrangement or anything like that, but everywhere I looked I saw clutter, and it made me feel sad.

I think it started with the Christmas decorations. Once those came down, I simplified the area on top of our entertainment center. What used to be a place for random clutter now, almost, looks like decoration.

Because I can only work in short bursts — like when the children are napping and I’m not, or when they’re otherwise happily occupied for the 2 minutes a day that seems to happen — the house cleaning/organizing/simplifying is a gigantic work in progress.

But it’s progress nonetheless. I’ve been able to tackle several major eyesores — like this one.

Before:

Yeah, there’s a bookcase in there somewhere.

After:

We let the kids take it over.

Here’s an after picture of my dresser. I forgot to take a before, but just imagine stuff piled high, cascading down the side of the dresser, no view of the top of it.

And we even rearranged the kids’ bedroom to make more usable space. (We rent and aren’t allowed to put any more holes in the walls.)

While I feel like I’ve accomplished something, I wish I could finish more of what I start. A few days ago, I started clearing the upper shelf of the kids’ closet, and I haven’t been back since. Last month I started cleaning the bathroom closet. I got back to it two days ago.

I leave my unfinished mess all over the house, but at least it reminds me that I’m on my way to something better.

I could use that reminder in my spiritual life. I’ve felt a little “off” lately. Like I’m not as close to God as I want to be, not as much like Christ as maybe I should be. Or could be.

And I thought about this:

“Being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”  Philippians 1:6

I’m not done yet. God’s not done yet.

The mess is evidence of the work in progress.

Life In Progress

A place for everything and everything in its place. Our motto these days is more like “no place for anything and nothing in its place.”

Thanks to Christmas, the addition of a new baby and traveling, our house is far from orderly. We still have suitcases (empty) in the bedroom, mounds of laundry that seem to multiply overnight, toys in every room of the house and piles of papers and other miscellaneous objects that seem to have no home.

This bugs me. I like order. I enjoy putting things where they go. I want to be able to walk through the house without worrying about tripping over a stray toy or cup.

I’m thinking that’s not going to happen until Phil and I are empty-nesters. Realistically, it’s probably possible sooner than that, but when I look around the house, I wonder if it’s always going to be like this. When we lived in our first apartment, our stuff was packed into it in an out-of-control, embarrassing sort of way. Then, our daughter was born and the disorder was more like chaos. When we moved to the house we now live in, we couldn’t believe all the room we had. We’ve learned, though, that when you upgrade, you find a way to fill the space you have. Add to that the birth of our son and we’re back to feeling a little like sardines.

Maybe that means we have too much stuff. Thanks to ample storage space in the attic, we have a few boxes of things we haven’t used since we’ve been married. They’re mostly decorative things, I think, like picture frames and wall hangings, although there’s also a box of music boxes I’ve collected since I was a girl that haven’t seen the light of day in close to 10 years. I’ve never been much of a decorator, but I want to be able to display these things and create a homey atmosphere. Right now, the atmosphere is modern toddler, at best; messy family, at worst. I fear that our kids will be 16 before we’re able to show off their baby pictures or that Phil and I will be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary before I get around to putting up our wedding pictures.

We’re definitely a work in progress when it comes to our home, and I know this happens to most families with young children. It’s just hard for me to accept because I’m not a work-in-progress type of girl. I like to finish what I start. This was the hardest time management lesson to learn as a reporter. Most of the time, I had to have three or four stories “in progress” while I waited for phone calls to be returned or interviews to be scheduled. If I had waited until one story was finished before I started the next one, I would never have made deadline and probably would have been quickly out of a job.

Most of the time my life feels like a work in progress, too. Some days, I wish I was a lot closer to complete than I am. I’m often reminded of how much work is left to do, especially when I say something I don’t really mean, become overwhelmed by the little things, or ignore a need when I could help meet it.

I’m grateful for other work-in-progress people in my life, who even if they’re a little closer to complete than I am, remind me that nobody’s perfect and nobody will be this side of Heaven. I’m drawn to those kind of people, who easily admit their faults and acknowledge they don’t have it all together.

Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved Philippians 1:6: “being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”

Someday I’ll be complete. Until then, I can rest in the truth that every day is bringing me a little closer to that end.