Living with clutter

Proverbs 12:24 (New International Version)
24 Diligent hands will rule,
but laziness ends in slave labor.

I'm feeling a little like slave labor this weekend. My normal MO is that of a hermit. I go to work. I go home. I go out for necessities: food, Diet Coke, movies, and very occasional entertainment. The rest of the time I spend happy at home. I like it there. My dog is there.

But then I do something to mess up the plan. I invite people in. It's not that I don't like having people over. I do. I really do. But being a hermit means I don't have to worry about unexpected visitors. And the clutter gets out of control.

Here's the scene: a tottering stack of mail/bills, countless loads of laundry, yarn in every nook and cranny, books scattered higgledy-piggledy, layers of dog hair and dust. So after a month or so of laziness, I am slave labor. The problem is that my house has reached the state that I just can't determine where to start.

So I work some and then I regroup. I've determined that I just don't have a very high frustration threshold. What I mean is that it doesn't take long for me to work on a problem to get to the point where I am overwhelmed. I have to back off and come back at it. My house is like that. I think my spiritual life is like that too.

The mess in my heart is like clutter. One day at a time, I make a bad decision that pulls me away. And then the next I let something else in that has no place in my heart, but really it's not so bad. Until you look at a pile of those things and consider how much time it will take to get rid of it.

I sorta feel that way about laundry. I have many clothes. I wear them all before I do laundry. Day by day, it's not so much. But after weeks, facing that many loads of laundry feels like a crisis.

And in all things...whether it's cleaning the house, getting back on spiritual track, losing weight, or saving money...I expect immediate results. I want to correct in a heartbeat what it took days (or weeks or years) to build.

I know better than to pray for patience. Maybe I'll try diligence instead.
Back to the mines...