I don’t have a soapbox to stand on…but I do have a small three-legged wooden stool I use to help me reach stuff on the back of shelves in my kitchen. The other evening I climbed up to open the cupboard and retrieve a bottle of vinegar. When I opened the door everything went into slow-motion as I watched a tall green bottle (that SOMEone had obviously NOT put back in the proper place!) slide past my hand and plummet to the tile floor. The CRASH and SHATTER brought me back into real-time and I stood on my elevated vantage point in a state of mild shock, watching the dark brown liquid erupt like a geyser-on-crack and shoot all over everywhere.
It was on the floor, under the desk, on the countertops, on the sides of the counter, in the refrigerator grill, on the door jams, on the dining room walls, on the dining room carpet, on the kitchen rugs–you name it. Shattered green glass mixed with a dark thick liquid emitting this super strong smell…because here’s the bonus: it was a big ‘ol bottle of balsamic OIL. Oh yeah. That’s easy to clean.
After I’d regained my composure and told all humans and animals to stay FAR from the vicinity (and still up on the safety of my stool!) I realized I had no idea how to tackle this magnitude of a mess. Do you start in the far out areas? Do you do walls so they don’t drip, or try to stop the oil from sinking into the carpet? Maybe you stay up on the stool and retrieve the wine glasses on the back of the top shelf, fill one of those with a beverage and just stay on your perch for a few hours?
Or, you climb carefully down, grab a whole bunch of paper towels and trash bags, and tiptoe into the very middle of the worst of the smelly greasy mess and start scooping handfuls of sharp glass and oil into a walmart sack. After a while, when the biggest nastiest pile of debris is gone, you can look around at the rest of the fallout and feel more able to handle it. Even though the mess might be far-reaching, it still seems “doable” because you know the worst of has already been dealt with.
In my experience, if you do the hardest thing first, then the rest of the things don’t seem quite so bad.
If you have to mulch three flower beds….do the giant one first and the others seem easier.
If your dog/toddler rips all the stuffing out of a king-size comforter, pick up the biggest pile first and then the rest is just bits of fluff.
If you’re delivering tomato-based soup and hit a curb (ahem) and it spills all over your back seat and floor, scoop the biggest puddle out first and the rest you can address bit by bit.
If you have a huge hole in your boat….block the middle part of it first to slow the water, and then you’ll have time to bail while you patch the edges.
If I do the hardest thing…then sometimes I am able to regain enough breath and strength to tackle the rest of it. When I’m on the other side of the hardest thing…I can stop and realize that since I was strong enough to do that…I’m strong enough to do the rest.
I’ve realized that this method of “clean-up” serves me well in other areas of my life too.
When I find out that something I’ve done has really hurt someone else…and caused a million other mini-problems in its wake….the scariest hardest part to me is facing that person, owning my mistake and apologizing. If I can do that…if I can tackle that hardest part….then there is enough weight lifted off of my shoulders to let me move on and do my best to clean up the rest of the mess.
When I find myself in a really tough situation….when I hear that things have been said that shouldn’t have been said and those little “things” have spread to many other people….the messiest hardest part for me is gathering the courage and calm to speak in love and truth to the source. If I can do that, then I can find the strength to put out all the other little fires caused by the big blaze.
Diving into the middle of a mess is scary. It’s not the place most of us want to be. But…if we are able to face it and give ourselves a good circle of clean….then it doesn’t seem quite so daunting to face the remaining periphery mess.
Sometimes tackling the hardest thing simply gives me the knowledge that I CAN do it and it won’t be quite so scary the next time. I like when that happens. I ride my bike on this trail that has poles in the middle of it. (Why someone would put sturdy metal POLES in the middle of riding trail I don’t know….but for us relatively clumsy riders it is a VERY bad idea. Just sayin’.) The first few times I did that trail I went WAAAAAYYY on the outside of those poles. But, eventually, I gathered the courage to slow down and creep through them. The first time I went so slowly I stopped. The next time I coasted through….and the next time I even pedaled! I just needed to have that first bit of success to show me that the hard scary thing…was possible.
As the paper towel commercial says, “Life is messy.” Every day/hour/minute brings another opportunity to figure out the best way to navigate through a sticky situation. Sometimes the stickiness is literal (busted honey jar anyone?), and other times it’s a matter of the heart. Either way, there’s usually going to be an “epicenter of messiness” that might seem pretty overwhelming. It’s not always going to be easy, or pretty, or comfortable…but if we can wade into the middle and take care of that hardest part first…then I promise you, you can take care of the rest.
(This also holds true for dealing with the container of carrot salsa that your 11-year-old “tosses” to you. As well as when your nephew starts throwing up as he climbs down from the top bunk and continues all the way over his brother and on to the bathroom. Luckily I have no pictures of that.)
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