Nice Try

Whenever I work hard to manuever the events of life into my preferred place for them, I end up disappointed.

I can have my ducks all in a row, but one of them will dive for fish.

I bought a little pamphlet the other day for a dollar called Home Organization for Dummies. What could it hurt, I thought. But after being an almost full-time home organizer for 30 years, I really should know it all by now. Somehow, though, I'm still as disorganized as ever. What if there were some tip, some hint that every organized person knows that has eluded me all these years? Maybe it's in this booklet.

I still haven't finished the booklet, but one of the points in the beginning was to start small, take some task and finish that one task. My son, reading me the booklet since I was not organized enough to have my reading glasses nearby, asked what task I could do.

Organize the broom closet. That, I can manage. But more important things always come up. My job is to make everyone else's job easier. And everyone else comes before the broom closet. Still, my son would ask me every couple of days if I'd gotten to the broom closet yet. No. I haven't. I had houseguests. I had school starting stuff. I had to write a letter or send a column or finish a needed brochure or get the laundry done because everyone was out of clean underwear.

I still haven't found time to get to that broom closet. And I'm still not exactly organized. I keep intending to get organized, but somehow, more human things keep appearing on the horizon. I can plan and chart and keep lists and keep charts of my lists and buy the latest bins and brooms and baskets and it wouldn't make the smallest difference.

I'm glad, though, that God's got things organized. He doesn't have things organized like they thought He did in the Middle Ages, with nice, neat orbits of planets at evenly spaced intervals. The four humors turned out to be a whole lot of humors and the incredible patterns in DNA were quite a surprise. We keep finding twists and turns in His organizational plan. But we know His plans are perfect, even plans for our own lives.

When I'm tempted to organize God right out of my life, I have to stop and pray for Him to prevent me from that course. I'm likely to organize Him out and still be disorganized. When I look to Him early, things have a way of smoothing out without too much effort.