I Am Worth It.

Once again, it's time for "True Confessions."  I am a slob.  I have this awful tendency to let stuff lie where it falls -- to the extreme consternation of my mother.  She's threatened to record herself saying, "Pick it up, Jodi!" so that she doesn't have to keep repeating herself when I'm around.  It's not that I don't care; it's that I'm trying to do too many things at once, and the "tyranny of the urgent" always seems to kick in.  I don't take the five extra minutes (or, sometimes, seconds) necessary to finish the task.  And it builds and builds, until it drives me crazy.

I amazed myself, though.  Last semester, I had a roommate who liked to keep a clean house -- and I was startled at how easily I was able to maintain pretty near pristine surroundings.  What was the difference?  There was somebody else there to hold me accountable.  Whether Erika was there at the time or not, I knew that she would eventually be coming home, and I'd be embarrassed to show her a mess.  In fact, there were times when I got irked at her for leaving a mess.  She's doing her studies from home this semester, though, and I'm back to living solo.  And, from day one, the mess has started to build once more.  It's not overwhelming -- I've matured enough to keep it from getting too bad -- but still, I'm not happy with myself for letting it happen.  So, what did I do?  I decided to make plans to cook dinner for my friends this upcoming weekend.  If I have people who will see my house, I have to make it presentable. 

I went out to dinner with one of my best friends this past weekend, and was bemoaning the difference in house cleanliness since my roommate left.  And in his own inimitable way, he was able to cut through all my layers of pretense.  He looked at me, sighed, and said, "Jodi, when are you going to realize that you are worth having a nice place to live?"  I don't know if he realized the impact of what he said at that point, but it was like somebody turned on a light switch.  (I love it when God puts friends into our lives who can do that.)  It made me think -- how often do I short-change myself because I don't feel like I'm worth the effort?  I'd be happy to drive five hundred miles for a friend in need, but I'm not willing to take twenty minutes to take care of myself.  And my life ends up suffering because of it; I miss out on the opportunities to add meaning to my life because I don't think that I personally am worth the time or effort. 

Now, I'm not saying that external motivation is a bad thing.  Having friends and family to keep us accountable is a powerful asset.  But it pales in comparison to internal motivation: the drive to stay accountable to ourselves.  It's what keeps us going even when there's nobody looking over our shoulder.  You may have heard another word to describe this: integrity.  You know that I'm a word nut, so I had to look it up to see what the dictionary had to say about it.  It gave me an interesting perspective.  Here's what I found: it said that integrity is "an undivided or unbroken completeness or totality with nothing wanting."  So, if you hook up with my train of thought, you'll see where I'm going here.  Unless we allow ourselves to operate from the understanding that we are worth the effort to take care of ourselves, we are intrinsically incomplete.  Mull over that for a minute; it's a lot to wrap your head around.  (I know it was for me.)  My friend was right -- I have to realize that I primarily am worth the work that I put into my life.  And while I must admit that the house isn't spotless yet, it's a heck of a lot better than it was.  :)