There are several things I wish were different about my life. One is that I wish I had a magic wand. Now, one might think I want to conjure things from mid-air, or have the power to strike evildoers. But to be honest I just want to use it to clean. I love the scenes where with swish and flick a whole house is set back in order. Forget riding a hippogriff, all I really want is the tidy up spell.
If I can’t have a wand I will settle for a music montage. This is the scene in the movie where some plucky song plays, like Kelly Clarkson’s What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger (or in the nineties it was Dreams by the Cranberries. Decidedly the best music montage song ever). The song plays and the heroine, along with maybe one or two rag-tag dreamers with their hair tied back in adorable bandanas, tackles some overwhelming project.
There are scenes of sweeping or dusting, of hauling things to a trash can, of cleaning out every corner, and inevitably someone pulls back a tarp and a bird flies out at them.
Then somewhere in the montage the activities turn a corner to a fresh coat of paint, potting plants, rolling out a new area rug, throwing a pillow, or arranging an objet d’art, and finally, with a small vase of flowers, the camera pulls back to a finished project flooded with light and elegance. And the small group of dreamers are usually patting each other on the back and gawking and nodding their heads.
Well, no song from the Cranberries was going to tackle my spare room.
My spare room has been a problem. I am sure I’m not the only one who has found that an extra room can be a catch-all. It’s an office/laundry/Christmas wrapping/crafting room. Well, my spare room tried to do all these things at once and imploded on itself. I enjoy the wording of that sentence, as if it is the spare room’s fault.
It was a hot mess. But lately when I looked in that room I saw something hiding in that mess. No, not a bird or ants, but the potential to carve out a little corner for myself.
As Virginia Woolf says, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write…” (You know me, always quoting the Virginia Woolf. It’s either her or The Black Eyed Peas.)
So with the determination to be the change I wanted to see in my spare room, I took a deep breath and began one pile at a time. One box at a time to sort and shred and file down. I would find something to throw away from this drawer, something to organize in that corner. One piece of paper at a time.
I worked slowly and steadily, and I wasn’t alone. I had a few rag-tag dreamers to help me. It was several hours of work. There was so much shredding it was like the final days in the office of a hedge fund manager.
But several bags of trash and even more bags of shredding later, I was able to finish my montage, vacuum the carpet, move in a desk, build a chair, place some objet d’art and stand back and gawk.
At the end of the day I moved 37 fuzzy poms into the “stuff” jar. Seventeen of those poms represented things I gave away or threw away and twenty of them stood for pounds of shredding.
The process was arduous mentally to say the least. I have been trying hard to nail down why these tasks fill me with such anxiety and dread. A lot of it is the shame, fear and embarrassment I mentioned in the post about the ants in my car.
But more than that, I am afraid all this work, my de-cluttering, weight loss and exercise, will be for nothing. That at some point I will lose my zeal and go back. I will put the weight back on. I will once again find a room covered in mail and wrapping paper and laundry. I will no longer be able to run a mile or two. The fear that the design flaw is in me. In a place in me too deep to fix. That all of this, that I, cannot change.
I don’t have an answer for this. I don’t have a plucky line or the pinch hitting Bible verse. Just the careful decision that the potential for future failure cannot cripple me now. And the comforting reassurance that I am not in this alone.
So no music montage for me, just good old fashioned hard work. Perhaps God does not let me have montages because, well, work is good. Because there is something in the process that He is using to teach me about who I am and what I can accomplish in His strength. Maybe this is how He fixes the deep down flaws.
Maybe, it takes the work to work it out.
Taffy the Great 