The Victoria Day weekend, just past, is the unofficial start of summer, where I live in the Pacific Northwest. The trailers and tents got packed up, kids leave school, and adults leave work early on Friday to beat the rush along the highways and borders. The campgrounds were a buzz with campfires, laughter and snoring, the boats got their metaphorical feet wet, and the cabins get cleaned of their dust and cobwebs.
It is my favorite weekend to stay home!
The local roads, stores, and neighborhoods were quieter (except for the hardware, and home renovation businesses).
Of the three days of the weekend, hubby and I spent two days working at creating order out of chaos in our home and property.
Saturday was spent focused on the garage. It had gotten to the point that it was difficult to get our van parked, and have the door down. Two large work tables were piled high with … stuff. The place was crawling with webs (I fear to think of how they got formed). There were remnants of a bathroom renovation, and a huge need for a load of stuff to be taken away (or maybe two loads).
By Saturday evening the garage was neat as a pin … purged, organized, roomy and far cleaner than hubby and I were, with dirt ground into the skin of our hands, and later found where dirt just should not be found.
Sunday was our day of rest (including vast amounts of pain relievers to equal the effects of a day of sweeping, lifting, hauling, pushing and standing on concrete for about ten hours).
Then Monday was spent around the yard. Hubby focused on needs around the pool, while I was focused on moving the remnants of a load of rock (that was delivered over a year ago … but I’m not bitter), weeding a trimming of hedges. The end was in sight (as was another intake of pain relievers).
By early Monday evening I was starting to love where we live again. The never-ending ‘to do’ list in my head, that seemed to never have anything checked off was beginning to shorten in such a way that I felt that what was left was actually manageable to accomplish soon. The ‘head space’ that was found in those two days of ordering our world, started to turn my thoughts to dreaming of new projects to enhance and improve our abode and it’s surroundings. It is in dreaming and planning for the future that I feel most alive.
1 Corinthians 14:40 says, “Let all things be done decently and in order.” Although this verse is, in context, speaking of orderly worship, there is something ‘right’ in it when I think of it in the context of cleaning up the physical chaos in my home. When I have more order than chaos in my physical life, I am better able to see the non-physical parts of my life more clearly, and therefore better able to find order within those facets of my life.
Cleaning the garage and garden as worship … maybe that is not so far from the meaning of that verse after all!
