Spring cleaning is a process. Cleaning a home or a heart after a long, dark winter takes time. The purging of the old to give birth to the new is messy and difficult and it always roots out unexpected items to be addressed. When we think we have moved on, there is always one item left to be put away, one corner of our rooms or our souls that needs to be acknowledged and disinfected.
This weekend was a home-improvement and spring-cleaning extravaganza at The Chateau. We purged old clothes, painted walls, and began the long process of a pretty significant upgrade in the aesthetic of our home.
The beginning of the process was cathartic. We moved furniture into the hallways, tossed clothes into piles, and enthusiastically dismantled a majority of our home.
As I look around this Monday morning at the fallout of the weekend chaos, I am not refreshed or contented by our home improvement efforts. A mirror the size of a middle-schooler is in the living room and there are piles and piles of random items that we don’t want to discard but who don’t currently have a home.
This is also the current state of my heart. After a long, dark winter fraught with anger, loss, and resentment, the sun rises on a new chapter of my life cluttered with the unaddressed shrapnel left from the blows of this winter. I realize that my emotional spring cleaning, like my home, will take some time.
I am the type of person that ignorantly always wants instant resolution. I forget that most things take time. I forget that after the mayhem of the event remains the tedium of the follow-through, the tidying of the home and the soul.
Today, I invite you to join me in embracing the process of progress. Give yourself the grace to heal slowly, to pick up the pieces, one by one, examine them, and gratefully put them where they belong. In short, Marie Kondo the $h!t out of your heart.
On the bright morning of a new spring, I encourage you to have patience that the disarray of winter will eventually, one little bit at a time, give birth to a fresh future.
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