My Life is Counted in Boxes
Richard and Fran are moving house, church and town surrounded by boxes. In this blog, Fran reflects on how boxes compartmentalise things and is that true of our lives?
Boxes
My life is counted in boxes –
Boxes of books
Boxes of clothes
Of bathroom, bed and kitchen.
Boxes where memories are kept
Boxes hiding the unsorted tangles
The warp and weft of life
Not ready to use, or to let go of.
Boxes of notes, of essays, or thoughts
Half written efforts at perfection
Boxes of dreams.
100 boxes arrived today
To pack my life in
And open a new future.
Will all be opened, used, or cherished
Or will they stand as sentinels
An unused testament to half hoped dreams?
Or, will I simply gather more boxes?
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It struck me how we often put our lives in boxes: work, home, church, family. For many of us we live with an unacknowledged sacred/secular divide. God is interested in some things, but not everything we do. We hear this in our prayers when often we pray about being in God’s presence only when we are in the church sanctuary: yet God is everywhere, the earth is his footstall. There is nowhere where God is not present. One thing I love about Celtic Christianity is that they prayed about everything: there are old prayers about lighting the fire, making bread, dressing and milking the cow! Nothing is off limits.
When we compartmentalize our lives in boxes, we become less of ourselves, we are not whole and the more boxes there are, the more stressful life is. As Richard and I are being gradually surrounded by more and more boxes, I can tell you it is stressful. We are constantly moving around boxes, looking for things that we have already packed, living disjointed lives in the now and not yet. When Jesus calls us to offer our lives, he means our whole lives, not bits and pieces, or while keeping some of life in separate boxes labelled ‘do not open’. Salvation means wholeness, bringing the scattered pieces of our hearts and lives, the ‘boxes’ in our lives, and allowing Christ to bring healing and wholeness, so that all the boxes are open, and we are fully alive.
Now where is the packing tape?