Unpacking

Today I have to unpack our boxes.

They arrived last week and were met with much excitement (mostly about the tv and Playstation) and all the exciting bits like the coffee machine and Lego were immediately mined out.

And now what is left are the day-to-day casserole dishes, old school reports, books and odd pairs of socks. Not exciting.

I am reminded of so many projects gone by that started like my box delivery: with excitement and joy and laying awake at night that ended in ...nothing. See, I am a good starter. I can dream about what lies ahead, lay awake imagining the outcome and write To-do lists. But when it comes to the middle and end? Things get fuzzy. Messy. Anti-climmatical. It involves lots of "Did-I-really-hear-God" 's and emergency trips to buy toilet paper to avoid facing it.

But I have learned the following more recently (Thanks to Cheri Gregory:)

  When I avoid doing something it is most often due to fear

• Either fear of doing the wrong thing or making a wrong decision or
• Sometimes it is fear because I don't really know what the next step is 
• And very often, it is because there is a seperate unresolved issue that will be dug out at the same time. 

In the case of these boxes it is all of the above!

• I don't really have space to put everything that came in these boxes AND I don't know where everything should go. We moved back from London to a fully furnished home we had happily filled for 6 years before we left for the UK and then my mother-in-law's things were added.

• I don't know whether to start with the kitchen boxes or the book boxes or the keepsakes or clothes or toys. So.. I don't start at all.

• 4 years of our life are in those boxes. Yet it seems so small. London was like a pressure cooker (for lack of a better analogy). It 'cooked' me quickly and brought out parts of me I didn't know or want to know. But it also brought friendships to a quick depth that ran so deep that I am still bleeding from being pulled away. I will heal, but in those boxes are paintings that were painted for me, a prayer cloth with scriptures written on it with loving, prayerful hands, a cross-stitch of Psalm 73:25-28, a Dyson vacuum cleaner (don't laugh) which had my friend running all over London to find it, handwritten notes from children and people I had the privilege of sharing life with and a Russian apron and oven mitts from my sister-from-a-Moscow-mother. 

Aaaah I see... 

So- I resolve that for today I am going to do the following things:

1. Be kind to myself.  And when I start feeling guilty or condemned about my progress, remember:

 Romans 8:1: There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit" (NKJV)

2. Take the unpacking 15 minutes at a time (that's thanks to the Flylady) and

3. Have a cup of tea

4. Enjoy the memories. It cleanses and heals the wounds.

So... What was masked as my relentless procrastination habit was actually a fear. Fancy that.

More about Procrastination another time (Wait, did I just procrastinate "Procrastination"?)

Wish me luck!