PTSD While Organizing Clutter and Cleaning
Last Friday I published about my need I have in getting someone to help me clean and organize. If you missed it you might enjoy reading it first or even after: Needing Help To Clean with PTSD
It's been the junk room. The one that gets all the leftover boxes of stuff that no one wants to go through when they "clean" their room. It is filled with all the too hard to go through items because everything must be evaluated for its worthiness to stay in our home, to be stored away, to be given to others or to be tossed into the trash. I don't bother with selling items. At this point it takes more time and energy to sell then it does to give and both are more valuable to me.
But the junk room is suppose to now be my creative space: my office, my art room, my prayer and devotion room, my writing room which will be shared with others in the family and used as part of our home library.
I wrote a post a few months ago. I wept in the fact that I had no one to help me. I knew I needed help. I knew I could not do it alone. And God has provided.
Into my life has comes a godly woman Barb Eimer with YIKES organizing in the Nashville, TN area. Barb is a professional organizers. I phone interviewed a few organizers and Barb just seem like the woman for me. I liked her sense of humor and her kindness; God led me to the right person for the job: a friend for me in this task.
Interestingly she shared that on her first trip to my house she felt she needed to pray, not that she didn't take other "jobs" to the Lord, but she felt impressed by the Lord to seek Him. And He was preparing the way. We both needed Him as she would walk me through memories in the piles of junk that needed to be sorted but could not be done without emotion, even an occasional trigger.
I was able to share quickly and deeply about my horrid childhood and my task in life to recover. She was instantly able to empathize though she had not lived through abuse nor worked with a client yet that had such a reason for needing an organizer. She commented that most people just procrastinate or don't want to do the work of cleaning up but she genuinely recognized that I had a need. And this blew me away because it is what my heart cry was to God earlier. Barb got it; she got me.
Also, it encouraged her that God was using her in her organizing business to minister. She has a missionary background and very deep heart to minister to others; I could see it was fulfilling to her to see a deeper meaning to the work she felt God leading her to develop. God was showing her a vision and fulfillment that could be obtained from doing the mundane: cleaning, sorting, and organizing.
We discovered that we are both writers and marveled at how God could be laying the groundwork for a potential book that could minister to others who both organize for others and who struggle to be organized. But we put that aside for another day as we reached for the boxes, the task at hand.
Several things were hard for me but then I picked up an ornament that my mother had given to me 30 years prior as a "just married/ first Christmas together" gift. I love ornaments, but I don't know my mother as a mother. She is a denier of the abuse we endured and she was a co-abuser by allowing it and not protecting us. So I held that ornament in my hand and had to make a decision; I dropped it in the giveaway box. A simple action that caused emotions to roll within my soul.
It felt like tossing my hope of a mother-daughter into a discard box. I needed to grieve. It signaled the end of a season of loss. A closure. Yes, it was time to let go. Children seem to let go more easily; they are not so attached. But I needed this process to move on. The child in me needed to release the dream of having a mother I never had.
After a few more minutes of being disassociated while "helping" to sort items, I broke down in tears and went into the room to sit down. I wept, and Barb comforted me. We prayed and God brought peace. Slowly, we progressed through the boxes. I was so encouraged by Barb when she explained that I was one of the few people she ever met that really had a real reason for needing help. All my life I have been asking for help and no one hears, but now is the time for God to bring these people into my life. I feel so blessed to be making progress.
It's been the junk room. The one that gets all the leftover boxes of stuff that no one wants to go through when they "clean" their room. It is filled with all the too hard to go through items because everything must be evaluated for its worthiness to stay in our home, to be stored away, to be given to others or to be tossed into the trash. I don't bother with selling items. At this point it takes more time and energy to sell then it does to give and both are more valuable to me.
 |
| Photo credit: Clutter by elizapapno DeviantArt |
But the junk room is suppose to now be my creative space: my office, my art room, my prayer and devotion room, my writing room which will be shared with others in the family and used as part of our home library.
I wrote a post a few months ago. I wept in the fact that I had no one to help me. I knew I needed help. I knew I could not do it alone. And God has provided.
Into my life has comes a godly woman Barb Eimer with YIKES organizing in the Nashville, TN area. Barb is a professional organizers. I phone interviewed a few organizers and Barb just seem like the woman for me. I liked her sense of humor and her kindness; God led me to the right person for the job: a friend for me in this task.
Interestingly she shared that on her first trip to my house she felt she needed to pray, not that she didn't take other "jobs" to the Lord, but she felt impressed by the Lord to seek Him. And He was preparing the way. We both needed Him as she would walk me through memories in the piles of junk that needed to be sorted but could not be done without emotion, even an occasional trigger.
I was able to share quickly and deeply about my horrid childhood and my task in life to recover. She was instantly able to empathize though she had not lived through abuse nor worked with a client yet that had such a reason for needing an organizer. She commented that most people just procrastinate or don't want to do the work of cleaning up but she genuinely recognized that I had a need. And this blew me away because it is what my heart cry was to God earlier. Barb got it; she got me.
Also, it encouraged her that God was using her in her organizing business to minister. She has a missionary background and very deep heart to minister to others; I could see it was fulfilling to her to see a deeper meaning to the work she felt God leading her to develop. God was showing her a vision and fulfillment that could be obtained from doing the mundane: cleaning, sorting, and organizing.
We discovered that we are both writers and marveled at how God could be laying the groundwork for a potential book that could minister to others who both organize for others and who struggle to be organized. But we put that aside for another day as we reached for the boxes, the task at hand.
Several things were hard for me but then I picked up an ornament that my mother had given to me 30 years prior as a "just married/ first Christmas together" gift. I love ornaments, but I don't know my mother as a mother. She is a denier of the abuse we endured and she was a co-abuser by allowing it and not protecting us. So I held that ornament in my hand and had to make a decision; I dropped it in the giveaway box. A simple action that caused emotions to roll within my soul.
 |
| Photo Credit: Overmanzan DeviantArt |
It felt like tossing my hope of a mother-daughter into a discard box. I needed to grieve. It signaled the end of a season of loss. A closure. Yes, it was time to let go. Children seem to let go more easily; they are not so attached. But I needed this process to move on. The child in me needed to release the dream of having a mother I never had.
After a few more minutes of being disassociated while "helping" to sort items, I broke down in tears and went into the room to sit down. I wept, and Barb comforted me. We prayed and God brought peace. Slowly, we progressed through the boxes. I was so encouraged by Barb when she explained that I was one of the few people she ever met that really had a real reason for needing help. All my life I have been asking for help and no one hears, but now is the time for God to bring these people into my life. I feel so blessed to be making progress.
Comments
I would like a Barb
The funny thing is that I can help other people sort and clean, I am even good at it.
But it is really really hard to gigure out my own.
Jill