The "bug" hit again. What precipitated it was the purchase of a larger television set several months ago. The television would not fit in our armoire bought for that purpose, so a new console was bought. However, what to do with the armoire? I decided that I would like a craft/sewing closet. We do crafts downstairs, I sew downstairs, I needed storage downstairs. The armoire was downstairs. Voila!

I went to Walmart and found some organizing containers that were perfect for a smaller storage area such as the armoire and bought at least one of each size just so I would know which sizes I needed for different kinds of items. Sometimes I just had a "feeling" that certain sizes would be used more and I bought more. Once home, I gathered all the craft supplies, sorted them out on the dining room table, and designated which size container was best for each category. I made lists of additional containers. I utilized my label-maker as I have never done before since I finally realized that things get put away better if one knows where one is putting them. In two days, my crafts were sorted and the containers stacked on the floor. Then I gathered my sewing supplies and did the same with them. I brought out my tape measurer--which interestingly enough always seems to strike fear into the hearts of my daughters--and measured the height of the two tallest containers stacked on each other and then drew marks inside the armoire where I wanted additional shelves placed. My husband bought some laminated boards and had the men at Home Depot cut them to fit and he installed the shelves for me. I put my containers on the shelves.

I organized my scrapbook paper by color (or dominant color in patterned papers) and bought these magazine-type holders for scrapbook paper at Hobby Lobby (30% off), and called my trusty label-maker into service again. The scrapbook paper is now organized and in the armoire. Even the scraps are organized by color in their separate holders. Current scrapbook projects have their own sleeves. Cardstock is also organized. The scrapbook paper containers are on the bottom of the top section of the armoire because there is room in front of them to use as workspace. It's even counter height. It's like it was meant to be.

Every day for a week, I'd go to the armoire and open the doors. Such neatness! Such clarity of purpose! I would sigh. And then I would turn around to look at the rest of the room...sigh...Oh, well...

One of my organizing books--remember I have several that address different areas of organization--says that I should determine a purpose for each storage area of my house and clear that area of anything that doesn't fulfill that purpose. If I don't do desk work in the kitchen, for instance, then why should I put my files on the counter there? If I don't wrap gifts in the bedroom, then why do I keep the gift wrap there? Actually, that makes sense and how I have felt about organizing all along, even when I lived in our 1300 sq. ft house in Alabama.

Another book says to look at everything I own and make these determinations: Do I use it? Does it make my house a better place? Does it help me to be a better person? Does it enrich the lives of my family and friends? Amazing how so much of what we do keep doesn't live up to any of these. They just take up space!

So, dragging my sorting boxes behind me, I am tackling my rooms as I've never tackled them before. Pen and paper near at hand, I make lists for additional organizing materials needed, or of items that need sorting somehow, or chores to do in order to organize an area (such as moving a shelf up a few inches--closet under the stairs). I do a lot of staring into the spaces that I am organizing. (People that don't know me would think I had lost it; my family knows this is how I "figure it out.") Items are thrown away, or given to one of my daughters to put where it does have a place, or put into a box for either giving away or for a potential garage sale. Categories are created and written on paper taped to the wall, stuff is piled under the paper signs, eventually the space is cleared and I get to work.

At present my house is a total wreck. Boxes everywhere, it looks like we are moving in or out. And yet, I don't feel compelled to work at it every minute of every day in order to get it all cleared by a certain time. My original "done by" date for the dining room has come and gone. Maybe next month. It is a work in progress. In my mind's eye, I see what the house can look like, the order it can have. As long as I keep on working little by little, I just need to give it a chance to be what I want it to be.

There is a poster that I have of a child playing with some building blocks. You can't tell what he is building because the stack of blocks looks only like a stack of blocks. In the corner are the words, "Be patient. God isn't finished with me yet."

We are the workmanship of God. (Ephesians 2:10) Only unlike my half-formed ideas on how I want the house to be put together, God has a perfect plan for us. And though He could say the word and we would be perfectly living up to His perfect plan, He has decided to let us be free-willed souls who choose to live up to His plan. So we must work on it. We must decide, based on His guidelines what is in ourselves that doesn't meet up to His purpose and throw it out. We must decide what is in ourselves that can be used for His purpose and work on it to make it live up to its potential.

Sometimes we stumble along, not knowing that something about ourselves is not useful, does not make us a better people, does not enrich the lives of our family and friends. Sometimes we can't figure out how best to use a talent that we have for His purpose, but we know there must be a way, so we have to set it aside and "figure it out." There are days when it all seems to come together and days when we don't seem to be able to figure anything out or do anything right. But just because we can't figure it out, doesn't mean the plan is flawed. If we are trying to order our lives, then we are works in progress. God can see us as He wants us to be. He gave us a chance to be what He wants us to be. Sometimes, we need to remember to give ourselves the same chance.

Maybe I've said this before, but life is full of change. Big changes in mine the past two years what with the move and a daughter getting married, and another deciding not to come "home" for the summer, and the latest being to send yet another daughter off to college. I always have a hard time sending one off to college for the first time because all the emotions that I felt my own first semester--yes, even so many years later--come rushing back in vivid detail. I think I end up feeling "homesick" as well. My father's health is not very well and he is far away so that I only get to see him once a year. I think he remembered me when we saw him last week, though. I know that I will always remember the smile he had on his face. Ear to ear, happy, very genuine. Having just left my daughters at Florida College, I was very careful what I said to him, though, because I was afraid that I would see for myself just how badly his health has deteriorated and I'd burst into tears which would only upset him. Tears needed to wait for later. It was still difficult to watch him eating his lunch and just sitting there without conversation. He had to devote all of his concentration on eating. This is the man who was such a conversationalist and cut-up until the past year or so.

Some people like things to change. Granted little changes and some big ones can be wonderful happy moments in our lives. For instance, I welcomed having a son-in-law and I delight that he is "mine." But I like some things to stay the way they are. There is comfort there; security. I told my daughters when we moved and everything changed so much--in some ways not for the better--that I thought that perhaps our lives changed all the time so that we would look to God for our source of comfort and strength. God changes not. He is so dependable and there is security in that. He makes a promise and we know He will keep it. Once we accept His conditions of salvation and become His children, the only reason there will ever, ever be an unwelcome change in our relationship with Him is if we are the ones who change it by pulling away from Him, rejecting His commands and His promises, not taking time to know Him better through study and prayer. God does not want to change His relationship with us for the worse. He is always there for us to enfold us in His loving arms, we just have to go to Him and stay with Him.

So, I've sent two daughters down to college. My other daughter and her husband are down there as well. I miss them terribly. But God has allowed me the joy of a daughter returning home, at least for a little while and I look forward to the happy times we have with her living with us and the many ways that she will enrich our lives through her presence. And most importantly God is there. One of my daughters used to say when she was little and it was bedtime, "I love you forever and always and all the time." God tells us the same thing! What joy I should have in that consolation!

"For He himself has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you'." (Hebrews 13:5c NKJV)

At least that's what I was thinking as I was happily creating labels with my label-maker. Silver labels, metallic pink labels, metallic blue labels, clear labels, white paper labels. I've had my label-maker for about 5 years now and never had I had so much fun making labels.

One of the reasons I was enjoying making my labels is because I was discovering how easy it was to retrieve and put away the items in the containers I was labeling. It seems like that would make perfect sense, right? Well, sense has darted this way and that as I vainly tried to catch hold of it for several years now! But finally I held it captive. At least in this area.

It came to me how nice it was to have labels the night I decided to create for myself some "books" for decorating ideas. I have long been a fan of decorating magazines. Over the past 6 to 8 years, I've picked my favorites, bought them, looked at them over and over as if they were classic literature and kept them. I decided this summer it would be easier to utilize the ideas in them if I tore out the pictures and organized them by room. That's where file folders come in handy. But, to go one step further, I decided to go through all my torn out pictures and articles and choose those that would apply specifically to this house. So I rummaged through my night stand where I found some comb-bound poly "books" with pages like pocket pages. One book is for the first floor, the second book for the second floor. I labeled each book. Then each pocket page received a label like "Front yard and entrance," "Entryway," "Dining Room," "Living Room," "Breakfast Room," etc. (No reason to list all the areas of my house!)

Then came the sorting. After about an hour, I had two books of decorating and project ideas for this house. The next day I went through all the paint chips that I have collected since we worked on the house in Alabama and when I found a color that I might like for a certain room, it went into a smaller pocket in front of the main pocket on a pocket page. These smaller pockets are made for discs, but they hold paint chips beautifully!

Now I can add my graph paper floor plan of each room, or my graph paper drawing of a project for each room in the pockets, instructions for a project, brochures, information I gathered online, etc. to each room's respective pocket. When I g to the store, I can grab my books. So much easier than taking along an armful of magazines that have been flagged with Post-It flags.

So, what's this got to do with my label-maker and "what's in a name?"

When I decided to work on this little decorating book project, I knew I would need my label-maker. In my recent obsession with organizing our school room, I had made a label for a photo box in which I put my label-maker and all those lovely label-making tapes. So I grabbed my two poly-books, gathered my magazine pages, walked over to the shelves and after reading the labels on the photo boxes, took down the one with the label-maker. When the project was completed, I put the label-maker and supplies back in the box and put it away.

It was so easy! I knew what I wanted and I found the box with the label for what I wanted and I got it. No rummaging through a box of other items. No looking in drawers or under piles of other things. It was right there, labeled so I knew exactly what I was getting even though the box was opaque.

I have heard that we should not label some things, though. Labeling people is a no-no. How many times have I heard someone gasp or seen a look of dismay cross a listener's ears when the preacher says that someone who is sinning is a sinner? "Oh, we can't call them sinners! They are just uninformed." But you know, if we aren't willing to see sinners as sinners, then how are we going to lead them to salvation? "This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners..." (1 Timothy 1:15 NKJV) We have to look at those who have not yet accepted Christ as sinners or we won't be compelled to teach them. They are not "just" our family, our co-workers, our neighbors, our acquaintances, or even our "enemies." They are sinners who are lost.

And what about this idea of sin? Two married people who are not married to each other and yet are having a relationship that was meant only for married people are "having an affair." No, they are committing adultery. Two people of the same sex who are having sexual relations with each other are "gay." No, they are homosexuals. Someone who takes money from the office is "in dire circumstances" and "needs our sympathy." No, though I will help him and his family with whatever means I have, he is a thief. A man forces a woman to have "sexual relations" with him and he is "passionate." No, he is a rapist.

Sin is sin and sinners are sinners and I don't want to be the one at Judgment who tries to explain it any other way.

And how many of us who have accepted Christ and his salvation have avoided attaching a label to ourselves? If we have left Christ, we have fallen "short of grace" and are "defiled." (Hebrews 12:15) If we ever think that this can't happen to us, we need to "take heed lest we fall." (1 Corinthians 10:12) Sin is sin for Christians, too.

I know of a man. He lusted after a woman. He took something that did not belong to him. He committed adultery. He murdered a man. When he was approached about these sins, what was his response? Did he talk about how God had made him this way or society had oppressed him? Or about how awful his parents had treated him when he was a boy? No, he said, "I have sinned against the Lord." (2 Samuel 12:13) He called his sins what they were--sins. Can we do less and expect the Lord to look upon us as men or women "after his own heart?"

The Bible is full of labels. People are righteous or people are sinners. Works of the flesh are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery, hatred, contentions, jealousies, outbursts of wrath, selfish ambitions, dissensions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revelries. Fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. (Galatians 5:19-23) Those who deserve death are those who are filled with unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness, envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful. (Romans 1:28-31) Things that are true, noble, just, pure, lovely, of good report, virtuous, and praiseworthy are to occupy our minds. (Philippians 4:8)

Labels tell us what things are. God tells us which labels we are to spend our time pursuing and which we are to find shame in having attached to us. Maybe it's time to get out our spiritual label-makers.

Unfortunately, I was out doing the grocery shopping when he got here. Or perhaps that's not so unfortunate since we did need the food! We have entertained him in grand style. With Scrabble. Dinner at IHOP. Bits and pieces of "America's Got Talent." Mario Kart (I think). A 1971 episode of "Mission: Impossible." And talk about "The Wizard of Oz" as commented on by Jack O'Neill. With two "L's." (You have to watch "Stargate SG-1" to get that one.) What a nice evening!

And apparently the poor fellow doesn't know what he might be getting himself in for by volunteering to help out with any projects we have going on around here. Jonathan, the last people to visit our house--except this past Christmas--instantly received a slice of pizza in one hand and a paintbrush in the other!

No, we won't be painting. (Is that a sigh of relief I hear coming from the person in front of his Mac?) Tomorrow or next week. Anyone want to come visit the week following? I have a lot of paintbrushes!

Not sure I quite like the new style. Mostly because the print that tells me who left a comment on my weblog is so small, I have to get just inches away from the monitor to read their names! Maybe everyone who comments could just type out, "Hey, it's Knothead commenting here!" (My apologies if there really is a Knothead; I just pulled that out of the middle of the air.)