About Our Drawers
…and the Fearless Moral Inventory
I told her not to clean it out. I very clearly said, “Don’t touch my drawer!”
My desk drawer. The one sleek drawer on my prized, stand-up-sit-down desk with the shiny and way-too-easily-smudged glass top. That one drawer right in reach of my ever busy hands. The drawer with not much space, but which became the receptacle of everything that seemed-too-important-to-lose-track-of but not-important-enough-to-actually-put-somewhere-it-belonged. The drawer stuffed with business papers, personal papers, paperclips, sticky notes, lip balms, pens, more sticky notes, a clean hankie, Fr. Isaacs phone number scrawled on half an envelope, crumbs, a long expired Lara Bar, and who knows what else.
THAT drawer.
“Don’t touch it,” I said. “Leave it for me!”
Best Intentions. We know where those lead us. I’ve had ‘intentions’ of addressing this drawer for three years.
“Why is my office manager even paying attention to my drawer in the first place? I think she’s just inventing work for herself and avoiding her real job. The drawer itself isn’t really a problem. It only looks messy when people look at it! See, it’s not my fault for abusing and neglecting my poor little drawer! It’s her fault for being bothered by it! Gosh, why can’t people just leave me alone!”
Do I sound like an addict yet?
Let the reader recognize the insanity oozing from my head.
Today, she made a boundary choice, and emptied out my drawer. She didn’t ask; she didn’t need to anymore. She acted on behalf of what is good, beautiful, and virtuous. I came into the office to behold the contents of my drawer mounded (yes, MOUNDED) on the nearby desk! All my stuff. All my mess. Literally the papers, and symbolically, my years-long battle with inner chaos. All on the desk, paper-by-paper, going through the shredder.
There’s a line in the White Book about The Solution to The Problem of Addiction:
“All this was scary. We couldn’t see the path ahead, except that others had gone that way before. Each new step of surrender felt it would be off the edge into oblivion, but we took it. And instead of killing us, surrender was killing the obsession! We had stepped into the light, into a whole new way of life.”
I had a choice to make about my little drawer that I’d been guarding so viciously for so long. My choice was to recognize that my drawer had become unmanageable and that I was powerless to organize it. Then it was my choice to recognize that there was one who could and would help me with it (whether or not she was sought), and then to surrender my will and my drawer into Another’s Care.
Next, the Fearless Moral Inventory of the contents of my janky, overstuffed, little, junk-filled desk drawer. The Moral Inventory isn’t quite the same as a Life Confession. It is a tool to examine both the defects and hidden strengths within a person’s soul. Identify the trash and hold onto the treasures, some of which might not have ever been known except that first our lives were overturned by a power greater than ourselves.
In the matter of the overturning of my drawer, I walked away with:
Cash. Actual cash.
A giftcard to my favorite restaurant.
A Starbucks giftcard.
A hand-written love note from my middle son.
Prizes well-worth the stress of the overturning.
Maybe this practice of opening my cluttered, messy, chaotic places to others who care isn’t such a bad idea after all. Maybe if I do it, I won’t actually die or be rejected.
Maybe I should do this same thing now with my heart and mind…