I almost always have a horribly MESSY closet.
Seriously MESSY.
Scary MESSY.
Insanely, ridiculously MESSY.
It's so messy that if you came to my house just about any time of the year and tried to open the door to my closet, I would SCREAM and SLAM the door shut. (Not that I have ever done that before. No way. Not me. Right Debbie?)
It's so messy that only two VERY special and dear friends have ever even seen it. (And one of those was only from pictures. Is it weird that I took pictures of my dirty closet and sent them to her?)
It's so messy that I have made those sweet friends promise that if I ever died unexpectedly, that they would come to my house, clean it up, and make sure no one saw the huge mess. (True friendship is being willing to come over and clean out a dead friends closet. )
I can't believe that I'm going to show you this, but I think you must see for yourself how horrible it is. Here is what it looked like this past Friday.
Hideous isn't it?
Of course I love, love, love to have things organized. It makes me happy to have a place for everything and everything in it's place. And with many things in my life, I usually am super tidy.
But for some reason, I can't seem to keep my stinkin' closet clean.Several times a year it gets so bad that I can't even walk into the closet because of the piles of discarded clothes and shoes.
Many, many, many mornings as I am trying to maneuver through the millions of shoes and clothes on the floor to get to my clothes and find the shoes I want to wear I say things like this to Honey........
"I sure wish the Closet Fairy would come soon. It's been too long and this place is a mess!"
"Why doesn't the Closet Fairy visit our closet? Probably because it's too scared to come to such a messy place. I'm sure he's afraid that he'll fall and break a wing huh?"
He just laughs and shakes his head.
So at least twice a year I spend the better part of a day cleaning and organizing it. And when I'm done- it makes me so very happy. I find tons of new clothes (well, they are really my old clothes that were lost in the sea of clothes but they seem like new clothes) and it's so easy to find what I'm looking for. I love it and always promise, promise, promise myself that this time I'll keep it that way.
And yet I never do.
And last Friday as I was sitting inside my closet doing my semi-annual closet cleaning I realized how much my closet is like my life. From the outside with the door closed, everything looks neat and tidy and all put together. If you judge me based on the outside, you would assume that things are all neat and tidy on the inside.
And yet on the inside- sometimes it's just a big old stinkin' mess.
I hide my hurts, my fears, my worries, my disappointments, my struggles inside- where others can't see them. I close the door and put on a happy face and hide them from others, from myself, and I try to even hide them from God. How ridiculous is that?
As I get older I realize that in order to clean up that big old mess inside of me, I have to open the door. And I have to lay those messes down at God's feet. Because then, and only then, can He help me to clean it up, show me what should stay and what needs to be thrown out, and put everything in the right place.
Because God......................................He is the Closet Fairy. The Closet Fairy of our hearts. And there is no mess too big for Him to clean up.
P.S. Okay so as the day progressed I felt worse and worse about sharing my hideous closet with everyone. Talk about airing your dirty laundry. How embarrassing! It took everything in me NOT to delete the above picture of my messy closet. So that I am able to sleep tonight I decided to share both the load I took to Goodwill after my latest closet cleaning session and a picture of how nice and neat it looks when I finished.
