Fighting Emotion With Emotion

At least once a year I find myself having to re-organize/de-clutter our basement.  Part of it is switching seasonal clothes and an even bigger part is dealing with all the stuff that we just dump there for assessment later.  Out of mind out of sight.  Dump now, shed the tears later. 

I knew on Saturday that there's no escaping the annual basement purgation. I've procrastinated long enough and this might be the last Saturday I have free for awhile.  So "purge" was written in big bold letters in my journal and etched in my brain.  After assessing the damage, I knew it would take most of my day even with helping hands. That means I will be tired and when I'm tired I get grumpy and when I'm grumpy I find everything else that's wrong in my life, all unrelated to the basement. So I decided to have a game plan.  Plan one is to pace myself, take frequent rests before I hit the burnout point.  Plan two is to ask for help, for a control freak that is not always easy. Plan three, fight emotions (anger, frustration with the clutter) with emotions (happy clappy music!)

Usually my music of choice when cleaning is something fun and dance-y.  But the basement is a completely different battlefield that requires a completely different weapon. It calls for praise music.  Dance music can only make me happy so much in the abyss.  But oh, praise music, it makes me sing Hallelujah even in the shadow of the valley of Tupperware boxes. I find that praise, for all it's emotional overtures, actually helps me overcome the budding emotions of anger, annoyance, and grumpiness that a cleaning marathon elicits. Fight emotion with emotion. This tactic worked really well for me.  How can I be grumpy when Britt Nicole sings the truth that God is "who you say you are".  By the time Seventh Day Slumber croons "you restore the wasted years, you build the broken walls, your love replaces fear, your mercy makes us whole ", there's no room left for any negative emotions. At the end of the day I was tired but no one suffered the usual after effects.  Praise God for that!

Sometime this week I will post my Praise playlist.  In the meantime, I am off to bed and the music to that will be chant.

Happy Sunday!