keeping clean

So its moving time again. Time for taking curtains down, packing up a few boxes, preparing for the movers, saying goodbyes, etc. Really, a time to give my world and life a pretty good shake up.

So this morning while I was working on taking down some curtain rod brackets, I was struck by a thought...all because I noticed some dust on the wood trim above our sliding glass door.

Dust, you ask?

Let me remind you that:

1) I'm a bit of a neat freak. I like a clean house. I like things to be organized and in its place.

2) I like schedules and "to-do" lists. They help me maintain order.

3) I'm a teensy bit of a perfectionist.

4) I'm a ridiculous worrier. Want to hear my ridiculous worrying at its recent finest?

We're moving. We live in a clean home. We don't HAVE to have our home spottlessly clean like we have for a base housing inspection, and yet I have no doubt it'll still be pretty dang clean as if we were leaving base housing. Yet I'm worrying about what the future owners of our house will think of my cleaning tendencies! (Really, it just doesn't matter, because I'm convinced that most people will have the need to clean regardless of how clean it really is...something of a mental thing to help claim a space as theirs...or maybe its just my freak-a-zoid tendency showing through again.)

Okay, so now that that's all out of the way, let me go on.

So while taking down the bracket, I noticed the dust. Ick. And I realized something. It doesn't matter how hard you try, how much cleaning you do day-to-day, week-to-week, or month-to-month whatever the case may be. It doesn't matter just how incredibly crazy you might be about keeping the home clean (I'm not too ridiculous). The point I'm trying to get to is this...there will be a spot of dust that escapes you. There will be dust that is right there in front of you the entire time and yet you just don't notice it until you take off the jewelry of the house.

Thinking about all this made me realize, I'm the same. I may think that I'm doing everything I can to live a holy and clean life. I may scrub and put some elbow grease in spots that I am aware of that need attention. But as hard as I try and as aware as I hope to be, there will be black marks that I'm unaware of or dust that I just didn't know was sitting there. That really, its flat out impossible to get it all. I cannot do it all on my own.

That's when I was yet again confronted with God's amazing love for me and his powerful presence. He's here, in my life, and I don't have to do this all on my own. I'm not perfect...and never will be on this earth. But little by little, God will help me clean myself up, dust myself off, and help me focus on areas that need a little bit more elbow grease. Keeping clean isn't a one time thing, as you already know. Its a continuing, non-ending process...but you get to take joy in the fruits of your labor and jump right back in focusing on another part that needs cleaned.