Good morning Holy Spirit. Thank you for this time of quiet. The sun is not yet fully up yet our clocks are telling a different story. The past two days have been so chock full of revelation and feeling, I am dizzy to the point of throwing up frankly. So many things are being brought up for what? Reckoning? Forgiveness? Blessing? As yet, I can only ask for guidance, comfort and reminding of the truth about me. Our ambitious Organizing Project (inspired by our daughter’s desire to leave a legacy of order before she leaves to be married at the end of the year) really hit me square in the face yesterday when I decided to tackle (or at least begin to tackle) the issue of clothes. There were more pressing areas of the garage that needed a miracle but the six (yes six, remember six people lived here at one time) portable clothes storage units looking like six white tented hazmat cubicle showers needed attention first in order to clear floorspace.
We went through every single piece of clothing (in the first three, then thankfully it got dark) and decided keep, throw away or donate. Every area of failure and success was represented; the dress my eldest daughter wore to graduation, the white jeans I [finally] fit into (but now can’t get in any more), my mother’s red silk coat that held memories of when she danced and walked and sassed before her days of being resigned to a wheelchair, that beautiful purple velvet dress with the netting underskirt the girls wore once each to church. We found the rugby shirt my husband wore at his last posting in Queenscliff and the christening gown my father wore nearly 80 years ago. What was a source of continuous personal upset were seeing the clothes that cost more money that I would like to admit of all sizes accommodating an ever shifting number on the scales. To be faced head on with the evidence of what must be my lack of discipline or moral fiber or both was, at times, too much.
What was Love was hatching in the garage?
We would pause as needed to check in with our feelings and tap or extend love or just pray for courage. We got through it and the back of my daughter’s car is filled with clothes. My winter and summer wardrobes has been switched and I am waiting for that sense of regret/shame/exhaustion to move through. (Still a residual feeling this morning.) This is what I avoid by not looking at the clothes graveyard in the garage; regret, shame and exhaustion. I know I am being melodramatic, but the feelings that come up with each and every article of clothing are quite real in the moment. It is why I have ignored, avoided, done a minimal half-baked job, or just postponed until another year the job of going through all the clothes in detail.
At the end of the day we came in to bathe, have dinner and relax with some favorite shows. Since the day had been full we hadn’t read our daily piece from Tama Kieve’s vibrant book “A Year Without Fear”. It was so perfect for the very moment I was in I nearly wept with the jolt of recognition:
There I was mired in the very literal “ragtag collection of ideas I had savored” and Holy Spirit reminded me “I am not limited by my past”. In that moment the built up regret and shame of the periodic over spending, over eating and self indulged overwhelm drained away like the bath I had just taken. I was left with a certain gratitude for the time spent “with the past” but had firmly returned to the present. The present where I am aware of so much Love and possibility that I can only comfort and remind my past tired self that all is indeed perfectly well and on target for my greatest awareness of Love’s holy presence.
