My Internal Clutter
I recently painted and reorganized my office.
My office is generally a reflection of the level of organization (or chaos) present in the rest of my life at any given moment. When things get crazy—work is stressful, deadlines are approaching, the baby gets sick, my husband is traveling—my car is usually the first thing to experience entropy. Followed by my bedroom. Then my office. By the time the mess reaches my workspace, I know it’s time for a change.
The really wonderful thing is that the process seems to also work in the reverse. In the moments when I feel most overwhelmed, bringing organization to the space around me can actually help restore order to my internal clutter. That’s why I decided to paint the office. Once I begin to see order on the outside, I feel more peaceful and more convinced that I’ll be able to get a handle on the inside as well.
“In the moments when I feel most overwhelmed, bringing organization to the space around me can actually help restore order to my internal clutter. ”
I want you to come to reGROUP on Monday. Unashamedly. I want you to come because sitting in a room with a bunch of people who are walking through similar seasons of life—similar struggles, similar questions about God and relationships—can provide that little touch of structure on the outside that begins to water seeds of serenity on the inside. What do you have to lose besides a couple of hours on a weeknight?
“There is still something powerful about sitting in a circle and talking honestly about your life with other people.”
In the process of fixing up my office, I also discovered that my desk was about an inch higher on the right side than the left. Once we removed some books, it was visibly askew. My friend Katie offered to help me adjust the legs. We raided the facilities area for a level to make sure it was even, but no such luck. She pulled out her iPhone, but we quickly learned the “level” feature on those puppies is more of a loose ballpark estimate. (It could tell you if you were on the heavy end of a seesaw, for example, but that’s about it.)
Then Katie had a stroke of genius (because Katie is a genius and also the editor of this blog). She grabbed a stress ball from her desk. She placed the ball in the middle of the desk. It rolled. We made an adjustment. It was so brilliantly analog that I felt like wearing a watch and getting a car with windows you still have to roll down manually.
There is still something powerful about sitting in a circle and talking honestly about your life with other people. I know it’s old fashioned. But man, it gets the job done.
If you have ever felt like there is something standing between you and the person God has called you to be, or if you feel like life just isn’t working, reGROUP is an opportunity to walk toward healing and recovery through a safe, small group community. Join us Monday nights at 7 p.m. at the Herndon Campus.
Kailey Newkirk is the reGROUP Director at Summit Church. If you'd like to get in touch with her about reGROUP, office-decorating tips, or anything at all, she'd love to hear from you! Email knewkirk@summitconnect.org.