Nesting: Apparently NOT just for pregnant women

     What would possess someone to wake up one morning and decide she must have the most organized attic and basement storage area in all the land?!?  I can remember a general need, when expecting our children, to have everything in order and also remember reading in some books that this was somewhat normal...but aside from that, where does this compulsion for everything to be "just so" come from?  And in the areas where no one sees no less?!
     Now, I'm not talking shuffling a few boxes here and there or putting away summer clothes in exchange for cooler weather clothes...I'm talking total reorganization of all the things we don't use on a daily basis...and at the risk of great peril I might add.  Which brings me to ask...just who, pray tell, ever decided that those pull down attic ladders that come down from the ceiling are up to any kind of safety code or standard?!  I was hoisting boxes and random cumbersome items (that I had no business even lifting to move from one side of the room to the other) and hauling them out of the basement, up two flights of stairs and then up this rickety, folding ladder that's barely wider than one of my feet nevermind both of them.  I don't want to put all the blame on the ladder though, it of course has to be narrow because the hole in the ceiling is narrow, which means I couldn't lift these boxes and such in any kind of normal way and support them with the whole of my body.  Instead, I was having to balance them on my head or hold them over my head, if they were light enough, while leaning forward so as not to fall backwards off the ladder, while twisting them in every kind of manner to try to maneuver them thru the hole in the ceiling.  If that weren't tricky enough, every once in a while my big toe would get caught in the leg of my sweatpants and I'd have to somehow try to extricate my toe while balancing the box and my body on the ladder.  It was in one of those moments when I had to ask myself just how I thought I'd make any new friends if my face was split from forehead to chin in a headfirst fall off an attic ladder...
     I have noticed in myself the tendancy that when I feel unsettled internally to try to settle things externally.  At times it seems easier to unpack another box or to organize another closet than to really reflect on why I'm feeling so emotionally unsettled and to then ask God and also trust Him to "organize my insides".  I'm not sure where the idea comes from that if we're put together on the outside, it doesn't matter how we're falling apart on the inside. 
     My compulsive reorganizing has been a good reminder to me this week about the importance of transparency, whether you're the new person or the one who has been in a place for years and feels at home where you are.  Afterall, it is the heart which God looks at and not how we appear on the outside. (or how organized your basement is) :-)  "...for God sees not as man sees, for the man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart."  (I Samuel 16:7)  Shouldn't we also then wear our hearts on our sleeves so to speak?  So that others can know how to come alongside us and to feel as well the freedom and safety of being their own true selves?  I cannot extend that freedom to someone by telling them how so and so struggles with this or that.  I need to let them know how I personally struggle, what makes me feel unsettled on the inside.  Then maybe, they will feel secure in letting the unsettledness within make it's way out and to know that their struggles aren't just a prayer request that I'll share with someone else or a reason to be judged by another, but a way to find something in common, together...because really, if we're honest, aren't we all a little unsettled and disorganized within?
     Those who know me well probaly also know that I will always have some sort of obsessive compulsion or other when it comes to organizing or keeping things neat...so don't call me on it if you see me remaking the bed after my husband has already made it (even though it may make me late in the mornings...and yes, I DO feel the need to make the bed before I leave the house in the a.m.) because I like the pillows to be just so, or if you're here for dinner and the food is getting cold because I have to clean the kitchen before I can sit down to eat. :-)  However, I do resolve, in those moments when the need to have order around me is so distracting that I miss the joy in the day to day, to take the time to figure out what's really going on instead of risking life and limb on an attic ladder. :-)

"For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal."  II Corinthians 4:17-18

"And let not your adornment be merely external...but let it be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight  of God."  I Peter 3:4