I am the worst at unpacking my suitcase. Mine still lays at the foot of my bed from this weekend’s trip (it’s now late Wednesday), waiting to be emptied and put away in the closet. I don’t know exactly why I resist this small task. It will feel so great when it is done.

There are many little projects lying around the house that I choose to ignore. A few lingering boxes from our move, papers that need filing, drawers and closets that already need purging (sigh). And whenever I decide to get tackle them, I will be so glad that I did (finally!)

Yet I resist.

There are other areas that I could get lost in for hours. I love working in the yard. I’ve started two small succulent gardens in some abandoned window boxes left from the previous owners. I’ve learned how to propagate teeny tiny babies from different parts of a succulent that has become too big for its britches. I’m continually rearranging and repotting the plants on the porch, as well as digging up perennials to divide them and plant them elsewhere in the backyard landscape. Much of this is hard, sweaty work, but that doesn’t bother me. I love working in my yard because I love the end result. (I think I also love it because it gives me some alone time where my brain doesn’t have to think about anything. “Cause no one else is lining up to dig up plants with me!)

But I know that I will also love having a tidy house. Unfortunately, I do not possess the same drive to get it done.

I still resist making my bed. For a long time, I just didn’t do it. It felt like such a waste of time, to only come back a few hours later and mess up all the work I put into making the bed nice. (You can see my same problem with laundry. It is a never ending task.)

It’s like I’m in rebellion deep-down somewhere. There is a part of me that likes exercising the right to say to the suitcase, the pile of laundry, or the pile of papers, “Nope. Not going to do it because you can’t tell me what to do.”

I think I might benefit from some therapy. (At least I’m not verbalizing these thoughts out loud to the suitcase.)

I’ve been trying very hard the past several months to rest. To keep my schedule from becoming too full, too quickly, and I’ve done a fairly good job at doing so. I’ve napped a lot, read a lot, and spent many slow mornings enjoying coffee, Bible study, and prayer time for several hours. After an insane few months of moving and traveling, It’s been a season of R&R. However, there is a fine line between keeping things purposefully slow and simply being lazy. I don’t always know when I’ve crossed that line.

This isn’t a post where I am going to wrap everything up with a pretty bow and tell you I’ve figured out the secret to unpacking your suitcase in ten easy steps. You can leave all the comments you want about what works for you, but nothing will change until I make the choice to change.

But I wonder how many other, more important areas of life come down to the same thing: choice. The choice to do the things we don’t really feel like doing, because we know it is what is best in the long run. The choice to prioritize our walk with God. The choice to change our bad eating habits. The choice to get physically fit and stay there. The choice to prioritize people over things.

The list goes on. But I wonder how many of us are in rebellion to one or many of these areas, because we are holding on to some sort of warped sense of authority over those areas, to avoid feeling guilty every time we bump into them.