Paula, what makes Heaven Admin tick
I understand totally how you feel about having to pick up after someone, and how trying it can get. I tend to leave physical disorder in my wake, but that doesn’t mean I like other people’s lack of order, not in the least — nor does it mean I like my own. I don’t. I don’t love myself for it. Maybe some people don’t mind their own disorder, but I do mind mine, but, apparently, not enough, not to the extent that I take care of picking up after myself as I go. I tend to leave it for “later.”
What happens then is that I don’t really see clutter after that. Not until it gets so bad, and suddenly I see it, or someone is coming over, and I start to see with their eyes, and then I scurry around. Frankly, this is no way to live.
There have been short periods in my life when I would go the opposite way. Short periods where I kept up with everything, and I was neat, even obsessively neat. I remember having a roommate when I lived in San Francisco, and she peeled and ate an orange in the living room — I couldn’t tolerate the peel on a saucer on my coffee table — and I got up instantly and meticulously put the peel in the kitchen — as if I were the Princess and the Pea! It would seem that, whichever way I go, I go to extremes.
Paula, it amazes me how before Heaven Admin arrived, I knocked myself out cleaning and straightening up so there would be an acceptable level of orderliness when he came. Of course, it would not have been such a project if I had only picked up after myself in the first place.
Unbelievably, now that Heaven Admin is here, I find myself slipping.
Yesterday I “caught” Heaven Admin straightening up and sweeping out my front entry. He put the shoes in neat rows. Why couldn’t I have taken two minutes to do that? Why must I leave my boots exactly where I take them off? Why do I have so many shoes in my front hall? Why don’t I keep the shoes I wear only occasionally in my office closet?
I read a book once on styles of people when it comes to order or clutter. What it said about my style is that I need everything to be out where I can see it. It said that the ideal for me, for example, would be a bedroom with doorknobs all over the walls where I could hang everything!
But I do not try to make excuses. There is no excuse. For whatever reason, I am in a hurry to do something else that I must consider more important at the time. Now I can say I have to work on Heavenletters, but it’s also, for instance, that I have to be somewhere on time and don’t have time to pick up first — there is something within me that doesn’t make the time or doesn’t foresee the need to make the time, or I may think I have enough time and inevitably don’t. Or I’m too tired. Or, or, or.
Now, with that long preface — somehow I made time for all those words! — let’s get to Heaven Admin.
After your comment, dear Paula, about those around you creating or leaving disorder, and after I had been appalled (but not surprised) that Heaven Admin was cleaning my front hall, I asked him, “How is it you don’t get annoyed?”
He looked puzzled. He said, “Why would I?”
Now I was puzzled. What was obvious to Heaven Admin was unheard of to me.
Then he said mildly, “If I see something that needs fixing, I fix it.”
Senor Heaven Admin takes everything in his stride. He likes order, but he doesn’t take offense at disorder. It must be that he sees order or disorder on the same level as he sees hair color. If someone is blond or brunette, what does it matter to him, or gray hair, for that matter? Age doesn’t matter to him. Whether you’re a young child or an older woman, it’s the same to him. I guess what I am saying is that Heaven Admin doesn’t judge. He sees, but does not judge. He has his standards, but he doesn’t judge. He has his preferences, but he doesn’t judge.
At the same time, he cares very much. Surely, he favors neatness, and he wants orderliness for me, but pretty much in the same way he wants me to be skilled on the computer. The best I can tell, he is thinking of others and not of himself.
He accepts me. He sees disorder as amiss. He sees it clearly, but he sees me as okay.
An earlier blog entry about unconditional love made the point that unconditional love does not mean that anything goes. Heaven Admin also seems to be an example of that. He makes himself clear. Getting back to my discovery of his cleaning my front hall, I’ll tell you what happened and what I mean.
I tried to take the broom. He wouldn’t let me. He was firm but nice.
And when he went past my kitchen on his way to Lauren’s apartment where he’s staying, he said: “And if you don’t clean up your kitchen, I’m going to clean that too.”
Right away, I cleaned and straightened one counter. Two more to go! I pray I can my kitchen perfect before Heaven Admin does.
Godwriting is a blog by Gloria Wendroff and is about Gloria's daily life as the Godwriter of the Heavenletters project that is having a profound effect on the lives of people around the world.
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