One particular cupboard has been requisitioned for a different use, and as such our generous collection of odd-socks and auxiliary pack of toilet rolls now find themselves homeless, bereft, and of no fixed abode.

I’ve been mulling over these items all week, wondering where their new dwelling place could be. There’s nowhere obvious, so I’m facing the possibility that these ordinary household items may live in a state of perpetual disarray.

It might not seem an obvious connection to make, but somehow these items in their state of perpetual disarray have spoken to me of the dis-ease we feel as humans with the guddle of our internal worlds. Further to that, how our drive to ‘sort ourselves out’ can lead to a small life, sapped of hope, where self-awareness is king.

It’s something that’s especially obvious in younger people, perhaps in their twenties, who spend a fair amount of time and attention trying to work out who they are, and what they’re good at. Some of it softens as the decades go by, but the desire towards self-improvement or self-actualisation is common throughout the ages, especially in the West.

Picture in your mind the rows of self-help literature you find in bookshops. Once relegated to the backwaters of psychology, in recent decades these books are now increasingly mainstream. The attention-grabbing titles lure us in to the idea that freedom and fulfilment come from working on your issues or owning your story.
We are also drawn towards any of the gazillion personality profiling polls that promise, through self-analysis, new levels of understanding and flourishing. ‘Your unique set of letters hold the answer to every single question you’ve ever asked about yourself!’

(Disclaimer: I actually love all this stuff)

But…..

What if our enthusiastic drive towards self-knowledge is a thinly veiled attempt to be the masters of our own condition? What if all this self-improvement isn’t spiritual transformation, as we like to think of it as, but rather yet more human endeavour to work our way towards flawlessness? For, of course, if we achieve balance and inner harmony by ourselves, then functionally we have no need for God.

There are parts of us that will always be akin to odd-socks. And we won’t know what to do with them. We feel apprehensive and frustrated at the mis-aligned parts of ourselves, the bits of us wounded by life or ‘glitched’ from birth. Or, in the opposite vein, we deny them altogether, intent on getting pretending everything is A-okay. Either way, it’s natural that we seek hiding places for these awkward parts, they’re uncomfortable; we feel shame.

But what if our state of perpetual disarray wasn’t a problem to be solved, or even something we need strive to put words around, in order to understand?

What if our state of perpetual disarray was in fact the very optimal state, the only state, in fact, that can lead us to a state of perpetual dependency.

We all, 2 Corinthians 3:18 says, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

We only come to understand who we truly are as we turn our gaze off ourselves and onto the One in whose image we are made. Only the Lord, through the Spirit, can transform us, heal us, strengthen us and grow us. Only the Lord, through the Spirit, can bring the freedom to get past our jaggedy edges and mis-matched parts.

It is his work, not ours. We are his, not our own.

When we’re in charge of our own self-improvement, there’s pressure. We need to evaluate how well we’re doing, often reliant on others to give us the feedback we crave. If we relinquish ourselves to the Lord, in all the wondrous mystery of our clutter-filled selves, we’re released from that burden. We’re able to live free from the determined drive to fix ourselves (and others perhaps). We’re free to live in the fullness of hope. Not just hope that one day my temper will be subdued (although I do hope for that), but a life-enriching, expansive hopefulness that hopes in something far far greater than my own inner-equanimity.

And so rather than being frustrated with the parts of ourselves that we don’t quite know where to place, may these inner odd-socks serve to remind us that our state of internal disarray isn’t to be feared, or sorted, rather submitted.
For dependency is the only place disarray can really call home.

Still don’t know what to do with the socks though.

Thank you again to my friend Ros Boydell for sharing her wisdom so creatively. Besides appreciating her message, I always love learning new words, like guddle meaning “in a state of confusion or disorder …” (Dictionary of the Scots Language). Ros and her family are on Navigator staff and live in Scotland.