Clean up to feel up! Anything we can do to order our lives makes it easier to move forward. Divorce has enough confusion of it’s own without adding chaos in our living spaces.
“When we clean and order our homes, we are somehow also cleaning and ordering ourselves.”
Gunilla Norris, Author of Being Home, A Book of Meditations
You have probably never felt that things were more out of order or out of control than they are in the middle of a divorce. Your life seems to be flying apart in every direction. And if you’re like me and not an orderly person by nature, it’s even worse. A friend of mine, who for years was a grief counselor, told me that there is the “ordering” part of grieving. We try to get some sort of order in our lives, and often for women we start by trying to get our surroundings “in order.” I know I started doing the crossword puzzle in the paper every morning, and I had never done that. But it was so neat and tidy. Every square filled in. Every question answered. It gave me some sense of control. We get that same temporary centering by doing something as simple as organizing the silverware drawer or tidying up the kitchen or our work space or the garage or weeding the flower bed. When our lives are in the midst of a mental, physical, emotional, spiritual tornado, we look for any kind of order to which we can anchor.
So, don’t fight it. Clean out your closet. Toss away those things that are just taking up space in your life. Do a real Spring Cleaning. It will give you something productive and physical to do, but it will also give you a sense of taking control. Plus, a clean house or even a clean room will calm your heart and bring it’s own sense of inner harmony and serenity. That’s good no matter what we’re facing today.
“God hasn’t invited us into a disorderly unkempt life, but into something holy and beautiful — as beautiful on the inside as on the outside. ”
1 Thessalonians 4:7 (The Message)
