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Ridding Up Is Hard to Do

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In Neil Sedaka’s 1975 hit, “Breaking Up is Hard to Do,” we hear the misery of lost love:

Don’t take your love away from me
Don’t you leave my heart in misery
If you go then I’ll be blue
Cause breaking up is hard to do

Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again

I beg of you don’t say goodbye
Can’t we give our love another try?
Come on, baby, let’s start anew
Cause breaking up is hard to do

Instead of breaking up I wish that we were making up again

“Ridding up” is defined as a Midwestern idiom, meaning to get rid of, clean up, to empty. I’ve never done much ridding up. I tend to collect things.

In some ways, for those of us who collect things (a politically correct way of saying hoarders), “ridding up” can feel like lost love. We know we can’t do without that which we are about to throw away. The minute we dispose of it, we’ll need it. Why throw something away which is perfectly good? Etc, etc, etc. And after we finally release that object, with those sticky fingers that just won’t let go, aren’t we tempted to pull it back out of the waste?

Well—you knew this was coming—I’ve been forced into ridding up. We are moving to another house. And I have lived (and collected) in our current house for 28 years. That’s long enough to fall in love with a lot of junk. But some of it has to go. Wow, it’s tough.

As I was working on this thankless task, it hit me that ridding up was actually part of the Plexus Principle. All the junk I never use anymore is actually part of the bonds that tie me to the rack. These objects take up space, require maintenance, use financial resources, and interfere with the plexus that I want to create.

In I Peter 1:13, we are instructed to “gird up the loins of your mind…” Now “gird up your loins” refers to lifting up the long loose tunic and tying it around the waist in preparation for work or battle, turning that dress into shorts. Some translations of I Peter 1:13 refer to “clearing up” the mind, “getting ready for action.”

So, in a sense, ridding up is girding up, preparing ourselves for the important tasks, unencumbered by a long flowing tunic that could drag us down. Snipping the bonds, tying them up into a plexus of our choosing. The problem for me is, I never liked shorts. Of course I don’t wear a dress either. Isn’t there some compromise?

So how about you? What things do you keep that are getting in the way of your plexus? What do you need to rid up?

Finding Your Plexus

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When you look at the empty hammock above, you see that I’m not in my plexus…not yet. I’m working at it. And we all have to work at it. The natural tendency is for our lives to flow downstream, along the path of least resistance. And if we strive to arrange our lives into a plexus of our making, we will get resistance.

My mother died a year ago, and what I write next, I do so with all respect. But my mother knew how to pull my strings. She could make me feel guilty to manipulate my behavior. Every time I visited her she had a list of things for me to do. And if I didn’t do them, I felt guilty. I don’t know why she could do that to me better than anyone else, but she could. Maybe it had something to do with training me from an infant.

Anyway, after I read BOUNDARIES, I offered her my copy for her to read. I wondered how she would take it. Would she recognize her ability to control others? Would she be offended? I returned the next week to visit. I couldn’t wait to hear her thoughts on the book. She slid it across the table to me, the page marker indicating she had read very little. The only thing she said was, “Who ever gave you that book in the first place?”

She recognized that I was trying to establish boundaries. That did not suit her purposes. I never did establish boundaries with my mother. And most of the people in your life who wish to invade your boundaries will not be happy when you try to establish them, either. So the path of least resistance is to become the tortured on the rack.

It takes work to find your plexus. It takes work to make it happen. It may take a lifetime. We’ll discuss in future posts how we go about determining what our plexus should be. In the meantime, what are your dreams for your life? How do they align with your talents, with the gifts that God has given you? How would you use that dream life, your plexus, to serve God and His children?