Episode 116: Living in the Middle of the Mess

Your kitchen is behind plastic sheeting, the coffee pot has relocated to the living room, and there is a refrigerator in your entryway. Or maybe the mess is not drywall at all. Maybe it is a season where everything feels half-finished and nothing feels settled.

This episode is about finding your footing when you are living in the middle of the mess.

 You will learn:

• Why an unfinished, disordered space wears on your body more than a single hard day does
• What a sense of control actually does for your stress, even when your circumstances do not change
• How to feel steady in the in-between, before the beautiful after arrives

Scripture: Psalm 138:8

Research note: Classic and current research on perceived control and stress (Langer & Rodin; Lachman & Weaver).

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi there and welcome back to your next best step. I'm Coach Janet J. I'm recording this from a house with plastic sheeting taped across the kitchen doorway to keep the mess contained and a coffee pot that's set up on a table in the living room. We are in the middle of a renovation over here, and today the mess is the message. Let's take one small step towards steady when nothing else around you is finished. There is a specific kind of tired that has nothing to do with how much you slept. It's the tired of living in a place where nothing is where it belongs, where every surface holds a decision you have not made yet, and the version of your life you were promised is somewhere on the other side of all this dust. There's a reason that a half-finished house wears on a person more than a hard day does. And a study run in a nursing home back in the 1970s explains exactly why. So, the renovation. There is plastic sheeting sealing off the kitchen, doing its absolute best to keep the dust contained. My coffee pot is set up on a table in the living room. Santino has lost his favorite hangout by the window, and he is officially protesting having to go out the front door for his walks instead of the garage. Nothing is in its place. There is no normal routine, and every single day hands me a hundred small decisions. Which tile? Which white? Because it turns out there are over 40 whites. Where does the outlet go? Underneath all of it runs this low hum I want to talk about today. It's the gap, the space between the beautiful after in the design photos and the chaotic right now I am actually standing in. The after is gorgeous. The right now is cabinets emptied out with their content spread across the whole house and a refrigerator parked in the entryway like it pays rent. Here's what I have noticed about that gap. It doesn't stay in the house. It follows you everywhere. Maybe your mess is not drywall. Maybe it's a marriage. You're rebuilding one careful conversation at a time. A career you stepped out of before the next thing arrived. A body healing slower than you would like. A faith that got taken down to the studs and is not framed back up yet. Whatever your version is, you know the feeling. Everything is half finished. Nothing is settled. And your footing keeps sliding around underneath you. There is even a 3 a.m. version of it. You're lying there and the thoughts arrive. Will this ever be done? Did I make the right call? Why does it feel all unsettled at once? And there is no answer at 3 a.m. because the after has not come and the right now is not resolved. If that is you, here is the first thing worth knowing. You are in the middle, and the middle has a shape almost nobody warns you about. Here's what steadies me when I'm standing in that gap. Psalm 138, verse 8 says, Yahweh will fulfill that which concerns me. Your loving kindness, Yahweh, endures forever. Don't forsake the work of your own hands. Let's look again at that middle line. The works of your own hands. You are one of them. A house under renovation has someone still showing up to do the next thing. A finished house is done. So the unfinished places in your life are evidence that the work is still going on, and that the one who is doing it has not walked off the job. He fulfills what concerns you. He finishes what he starts. Even this, even you. Now, why does the unfinished mess wear on your body the way it does? A sense of control has a lot to do with it. Back in 1976, two researchers named Langer and Rowan ran a study in a nursing home. One group of residents was given real say over their daily lives. They could arrange their own space, make their own small choices, care for a plant themselves. A second group was given the same things with the staff making the decisions for them. The only difference was who held the control. The group that held their own small choices ended up happier, more active, and more alert. And the staff rated almost all of them as improved. The group that had things handled for them did not see the same lift. That early work helped launch decades of research, and the through line has held up. A sense of control buffers stress. When you feel you have some say over your circumstances, your body carries them more easily, even when the circumstances themselves do not change. A renovation or any hard middle strips a lot of that away. You cannot control the timeline. You cannot control the dust. And your nervous system feels every bit of that lost control. Here's the trap I keep falling into, and maybe you know it too. I keep waiting to feel steady until the after arrives. I will breathe easier when the kitchen is back. I will feel like myself on the other side of this. And the after keeps moving. If you wait for the whole house to be finished before you let yourself feel grounded, you give away your footing for the entire season. You can't control the timeline and you cannot control the dust. What you can do is take back one small thing that is yours. This reaches all four pillars at once. Mentally, the steady decision load eases when your eyes have one ordered place to land. Emotionally, that low hum of unsettledness drops when one corner of your world feels calm. Physically, your body reads a single safe ordered cue and lets your shoulders come down. And spiritually, tending one small space becomes an act of trust that God is tending the whole house and even the parts you can't see yet. So here is your step this week. And it's a physical one. Designate and protect one ordered space. Pick one spot that you can realistically keep. For some women, it's a nightstand or one end of the counter or a single chair by a window. For me, it is my whole bedroom. It is the one room the renovation is not allowed to get back into. I keep it neat, I keep it comforting, and when the rest of the house is in chaos, I can walk in there and feel my shoulders come down. And even Santino is more peaceful in there. Then comes the important word. Protect. Protect it. That space stays ordered no matter what the rest of the house is doing. It is the one place that is finished, the one pocket that answers to you. One protected space gives your body somewhere steady to stand while the rest of the house and the rest of the season slowly come together. It is the one part that is already finished and it carries far more weight than its size. So here is what carries you through the middle: a sense of control that settles your whole system, even when your circumstances stay messy. Psalm 138.8 promises that God fulfills what concerns you and does not abandon the work of his own hands. And your step is one small, protected, ordered space that is finished and yours. You are allowed to be steady in the middle of the mess. On Friday, we're talking about the kind of rest your body cannot fake. Follow or subscribe wherever you are listening or watching so you don't miss it. And I will see you Friday. For today, take your next best step.