When I was a kid, there was little I enjoyed more than rearranging spaces. There was only so much I could do on my own, of course, but as I got bigger, I loved extending it to furniture, not just toys. I couldn’t tell you how many times my mom and I shoved couches and chairs around in the living room…sometimes for a purpose, but often just because we were ready for a change.

As an adult with more things than room to put them in, I don’t rearrange as often, it’s true. But I still do for Christmas, to make room for the tree, or when I just can’t handle a current arrangement anymore.

A few weeks ago, our daughter Xoe came home from college for the summer. We love having her home, obviously, but it does mean that my lease on her room for my office expires for the summer, LOL, so I have to move back out to the tiny little desk in the kitchen that I’m pretty sure was meant for a ten year old.

I’ll be honest, guys. This area was a MESS. Yes, it deserves both capitals and italics. Total, complete mess. The desk had become the catch-all for mail and some of my work stuff that I carried out on Spring Break and then never did anything with. Under the desk, all my cloth shopping bags had been shoved in what began with order but had become haphazard. In front of the desk were a myriad of “good boxes” that we hadn’t thrown out yet, plumbing supplies from where my husband had just finished fixing the sink but hadn’t yet gotten around to storing the things again, and various new purchases that hadn’t yet found their home.

Let’s just say I wasn’t exactly looking forward to tackling it…and yet I couldn’t wait to tackle it.

So while David drove down to Annapolis to fetch Xoe and her dorm room, I stayed home to clear out of her bedroom and make space for myself again in the kitchen.

I started, oddly, not in the kitchen at all, but in the utility closet. Since we moved into this house, that utility closet had been dubbed “the cat room.” It housed the litter boxes, in addition to the water heater and softener and various other utility things. We’d at first hung some coats in there but quickly learned that coat rack + cat litter = dusty clothes no one wanted to wear. But it’s so out-of-sight that I pretty much forgot they were even in there, so yes, we still had coats hanging from ten years ago. Well, now that we are pet-less, I decided it was time to put this space to different use. I emptied the litter boxes, cleaned them, and stored them. Used some of the enzyme cleaner on the floors and walls. Took down those way-outgrown coats and gave them a nice washing so I could donate them. And then I began repurposing the space. Moved in all the tools and equipment just sitting around the laundry area and in the kitchen. Threw out all those boxes I didn’t need.

Doing that kind of work isn’t exactly fun, but it feels…restorative. Doesn’t it? And if we can find such satisfaction in clearing out our physical spaces, just imagine how we should feel when we do it in our spiritual lives too.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to let habits pile up. I let prejudices just sit there in their corners, rarely even noticing them anymore. I ignore the dust clouds of bias and judgment as they coat my heart. And sin? Yep, sin has a way of just creeping in and permeating, like the stink from who-knows-what in the back of the fridge or the “let’s not try to identify it” stain near where the litter boxes had been.

In our homes, our spaces, we can see these things. In our hearts? Our minds? Our souls? Maybe they’re less visible at a glance. But that doesn’t meant they’re not there. We just need the eyes to see them.

But we get used to the way things are. Have you ever noticed that? Once something is in one place for a while, we don’t see it anymore. It becomes background noise. We may even be perfectly happy with how things are, content with our arrangement. But a stranger coming into our house, they would see it. They’d notice.

Before we host things like birthday parties here, I always start at the door through which people will enter and really look at what they’ll see–and clean accordingly. I rearrange. I change.

What if we did that more often with ourselves? What if we really think about what people will see when they first meet us–not our hair or clothes, but our spirits? What are we exuding? Who do we show them? What if we honestly evaluated whether we display the love of Christ to everyone we meet, or if maybe instead they see first our biases, our judgy attitudes, or our self-righteousness?

But it doesn’t stop with the evaluation or even the cleaning, right? Once I cleared out all the clutter, it was time to really rearrange–to make things new. I started by moving a small shelf off the top of my tiny desk to underneath it, where the bags had been but now resided in the utility room. Then I enlisted the help of my engineering-minded son to build a little fake extension, so that I could use the funny-shaped triangular space between the end of my desk and a bookshelf (my space is in a little angular window nook) as extra desk space instead of just a place for things to fall and be lost to the abyss. Yes, I absolutely built this with cardboard and a stack of books, LOL. But hey, it works, and it gives me a place to put my pens and cell phone holder without using precious real-desk space that I need for my laptop, planner, and tablet.

After we clear out any lingering sins or bad habits or prejudices from our souls, we’re not done there either. We need to replace those things with better things. Remember when Jesus is talking about casting out demons, and he says that tidying the soul just makes it a more inviting place for that demon to return with friends? Yep. Cleaning out isn’t enough. We need to FILL ourselves. With what?

With Him. With Christ. With the Holy Spirit. With His love. With His light. We need to be so full-to-bursting with His presence that there’s no room for the clutter of pride or selfishness, greed or disdain to enter in.

Then, when people meet us, it’s like a visitor entering into your house and seeing not only spotless spaces, but smelling the fragrance of a lit candle or something delicious in the oven.

That’s who I want to be. The kind of person that people meet and are immediately left with a smile on their faces. I want to be the kind of person that makes others want to linger. I want to be the kind of person that draws others, not because of who I am, but because of Who is shining through me.

I still have some rearranging to do in my house. But honestly, I’m more concerned about my heart. What work do we still have to do inside us, to make us into places where Jesus can not only dwell, but through which His love can brightly shine?