The Devil Behind Me

I am a perfectionist.  I like…wait. No I am obsessed with Clean and Neat and Perfect.  A place for everything, and everything in it’s place.  I have been obsessed since before I can remember.  My siblings called me “Miss Perfect.”  Scornfully.  This obssession is perhaps the single worst Enemy of my parenting.  It’s what makes me yell at the kids.  It’s what gives me The Mom Panic Attacks.  Not noise.  Not jumping and running through the house.  Not arguing or fighting.  But This Obsession with Clean and Neat and Perfect.

 

My kids help alot with the chores.  They know how to do laundry, load and unload the dishwasher, bathe the babies, run the vacuum, mop the floor.  But they get sloppy.  And I lack the ability to keep on top of things 100% of the time.  So when I open the cupboard with the cups in it; and they all tumble out in a pile on the countertop screaming, “Pick me! Pick me!”, I loose my cool.  I swear.  At the cups.  At the kids.

 

Tonight, as I was helping the kids clean up around the house before bedtime, I opened the drawer where I keep all the little plastic containers and sippy cups.  The odds and ends that don’t stack in cupboards.  That drawer was a mess.  I could barely open it.  There were things in there that don’t even belong in the kitchen.  The worst part about this was that not long ago, I had gone through all the kitchen cupboards and drawers and organized them.  AND, very pointedly, instructed the kids that it really doesn’t take any more of their precious TV time to just put things away correctly the first time.  Obviously, That piece of advice went flying over their heads.

 

I took a few minutes to just organize the mess myself while I muttered under my breath something about how it seems the little punks are always right behind me destroying my Neat and Clean and Perfect.  

 

And then It hit me.  This is how I live life.  I long for and put a lot of effort toward Neat and Clean and Perfect.  I get the messes in my life organized and redeemed and covered by grace in Neat and Clean and Perfect piles.  I like it that way.  When my life is stacked Neat and Clean and Perfect, I can see where I have been and where I am going. It feels….ahhhhh…Neat and Clean and Perfect. *happy sigh* 

 

In the past few years though, it seems like (more than not) the Devil is right behind me destroying my Neat and Clean and Perfect.  The hardest thing for me to understand is that God frickin’ allows it. I thought that He would like Neat and Clean and Perfect.  I thought that was what He would delight in.  Righteousness doesn’t sound very disastarous to me.  Neither does Love or Self Control.  Definitely not Peace. 

 

However, way down deep within, I hear Him say to let go of my Neat and Clean and Perfect.  I hear Him say that He wants to get down and dirty.  That it’s all about me relaxing and letting Him walk beside me through the Valley(s) of the Shadow of Death, rather than driving the through in The Spotless Mamamobile.   Life with Him is not stacked in neat, organized piles with a file name in a program.  It is individual.  It lacks formulas.  It is His process.

 

Hava happy.

 

In other news, it seems like only two weeks ago that we were here at the Space Needle as One Big Happy Family enjoying a Grand Reunion.  But, the holidays are over, and America is back to eating fish after all that ham and turkey and prime rib.  So The Boy is headed out To Sea once again to take care of that for you all.  Please tip your hats off to him.  Cheers, Babe, for a safe and profitable season!  Luv ya!