orderliness

When I had my weekend away,

I started a list of habits / qualities that we need to work on.

First on the list was obedience

followed immediately by orderliness.

I take full responsibility 

for the lack of both of these qualities

in our home;

When one has to force herself out of bed,

child-training takes a back seat.

At least that was the case in our house.

We operated in survival mode.

Frankly,

I'm tired of merely surviving.

Anyways.

We have worked through the chapter on 'obedience'

in our character training book

and are making some progress in making obedience a habit.

We are continuing to review the verses that we've memorized

and have moved on to 'orderliness'.

We tweaked their definition a bit to define orderliness for us as:

organizing our possessions and time

so that we can use both efficiently.

We've discussed  why this is important

and what it should look like in our home.

But.

To be perfectly frank,

the scriptures used for promoting orderliness suck.

Not the scriptures - the application.

I just don't think you can look at God's instructions for the building and arranging of the tabernacle and say, "See, God wants us to be orderly with our things." Or turn to 1 Corinthians 14:26-40 to read about order in the Church and translate that into 'God wants us to have a tidy house". Maybe I'm just missing it. 

But I don't 'own' it.

So I can't sell it to my kids.

The truth is,

I am more at peace in a tidy house.

I feel better when there are places to 'rest my eyes',

and yes, when my floors look nice ;-)

There is less work to be done,

leaving more time for other pursuits

and acts of service,

when we take good care of our belongings,

and we don't have to hunt for things, 

because they are in their proper place.

And when we don't throw clean (folded!) clothes in the laundry.

And yes, those scriptures do (sorta) show

that one of the characteristics of God is orderliness.

But to extrapolate from that 

that we should pick up our shoes?

I just don't see it.

Feel free to try to change my mind :-)

(really! I'd love to be wrong about this!)