Spring Cleaning

In the Midwest where I live, the warming temperatures and melting snow often trigger the urge to begin spring cleaning. Over the winter, it can become easy for daily habits to fall by the wayside. The new year, while fraught with good intentions of tackling a million resolutions, often succumbs to winter lethargy.  And by spring, we are woefully aware of how far we have fallen short.

The idea that order breaks down over time is a law of physics. Newscientist.com explains the second law of thermodynamics in simple terms:

It expresses fundamental and simple truth about the universe: that disorder, characterized as a quantity known as entropy, always increases.

Ordered things in our world require work to keep them from sliding into disorder. Nothing beats the feeling of a spotless kitchen: dishes washed and put away, counters sanitized, and clutter eliminated. We all know the work that goes into that desired result. And it takes daily work to maintain that level of order. Without intentional actions to stop the encroachment of disorder, things naturally tend toward chaos. 

We see this law at work in every area of our life. The moment a new car is driven off the lot, its value decreases. No matter how much rehab one does on a house, things will eventually break down over time. On the cellular level, our bodies are breaking down. How we treat our body can vastly affect the body's longevity and efficiency.  Whether it's with regular maintenance for our car, or annual physicals for our body, most everything in life requires attention to slow deterioration. Spring cleaning offers the opportunity for a tune-up in our home. A time to purge the accumulation of stuff or the accumulation of bad habits (or merely the neglect of good ones). 

Perhaps Christmas nibbling turned into full-scale gorging. Taking a few days off our exercise routine often leads to giving it up altogether. Setting down a piece of mail to deal with "later" somehow turns into a pile of forgotten notices and correspondence. And while daily attention to tasks takes but a few seconds or minutes, having to go back through an accumulation can take hours. 

Our mind is like that overflowing junk drawer or junk closet we all have in our home. We toss things in and rarely examine the value of that thought or mindset. Over the winter seasons of our lives, we toss in worthless things like the lies we believe.  I know some of the lies that I've shoved into the closet of my life have included:

• I've always been overweight, why bother trying to change now
• Some body types cannot lose weight
• I need more body positivity to accept these extra pounds
• I'm not dead yet, so I must not be doing too badly
• No one can tell me what to eat or how much I should exercise

The more I repeat those lies to myself, the more influence they hold over the habits in my life. In trying to understand more about habit formation, I have been reading several books on the topic.  

In the book, Atomic Habits, author James Clear discusses goal setting as it relates to behavior change. He describes three layers of behavior change: the first has to do with changing your outcomes (e.g. a goal such as losing weight or winning a competition). The second relates to changing your process (i.e.  implementing a routine or system to help you achieve the desired outcome). And the third layer has to do with changing your identity--the transformation of your beliefs and assumptions.

The author goes on to explain that, "Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on what they want to achieve. This leads to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits. With this approach, we start by focusing on who we wish to become." (Atomic Habits, p. 31).  In other words, you change your mindset and work from the identity you want to be characterized by, and then move toward creating a system to achieve that and then successful outcomes will naturally follow. Much like the difference between treating symptoms versus finding underlying causal factors. 

The whole idea of identity is central to the Christian faith. Having a right view of ourselves (according to what God says about us--not what our faulty emotions tell us, or what Satan wants us to believe) affects every area of our life. And just as our house can tend toward disorder, so too can our souls become disordered when we lose sight of our identity. 

Lent can serve as spring cleaning for our souls. Growing up, our Ash Wednesday service included taking some time to reflect on any unconfessed sin in our lives, writing those transgressions down and then putting them in a receptacle where they were burned as a symbol of Christ's forgiveness and the removal of our sin from us when we confess. The pastor would then take the ashes from those burned confessions and make the sign of a cross on our forehead. I always liked that tangible reminder of Christ's death and payment for my sin and how His righteousness covers us. When we surrender to Christ and receive His forgiveness, we are marked as His children. 

As Easter approaches and we celebrate the promise of new life in Him, may you be reminded that while our identity is secure, we may have some systems to attend to in order for us to mature in our faith. If we desire that our identity impact outcomes (such as a deeper faith, being characterized by increasing fruitfulness), let us consider what needs to be purged from our life. Are there habits that do not accurately reflect our identity in Christ? Are there systems (such as prayer, consistent time in the Word, hearing the Word preached), that I need to put into place?  May we see every day as an opportunity for spring cleaning our hearts and minds!

Have a blessed Easter!