Cleaning House

"I sorta like how all of our stuff is becoming one..." she said as she combined the dregs of her bottle of Kikkoman's soy sauce with my own. Merging all of our stuff is tedious work, deciding which spatula stays and which one goes to charity. Especially when condensing two kitchens worth of rarely-used knick-knacks and single-purpose utensils into one kitchen with little cabinet space. But it is a good work.

Our pastor said that one of the convictions of Christian marriage was a matter of discovering a "new center of loyalty." That notion is intrinsically 'Gospel' as really the whole of the Christ-life is a de-centering from self and a reordering on the Creator. That makes sense to me since marriage is designed to be testimony before it is matrimony (and not the other way around).

It seems the word, 'mystery', can have the connotation both of a sense of bewilderment and a state of wonder. And it seems that the specific version of mystery that is marriage hugs both. And the work of combining the soy sauce and vinegar bottles demonstrates that.

He said it is very much like moving into a house: you carry the boxes of your life into the space that you live. Then you work together to decide which pictures/treasures/furniture becomes part of every day life and what goes into storage. But most importantly, the arranging doesn't end once you've 'settled in.' Rather you periodically bring down another box from the attic, open it up and together decide what becomes part of the home, what goes back into storage for a later time or what bits of our baggage that needs throwing out altogether.

Moving into a house is cluttering work. First you have boxes piled in major walking areas. Then as that box gets unpacked, contents spill into every last available space. It actually gets messier before things find their place in the order of daily house-life.

Letting go is also a Gospel work.