Time to Get My Move On!

Intentions.  We all have them.  I cannot tell you the amount of time and energy I have exerted on thinking about what I need to do to make our lives better.  I need to start my day earlier, I need to start my day with quiet times, I need to clean out all the closets in my house, I need to have a garage sale, I need to schedule lunch with so and so, I need to develop a routine.  I need to, I need to, I need to.  When what I need to do is BREATHE! 

It is not secret that we all want to be better wives, moms, friends, homemakers and Christians.  We want people to see us as having it all together and living life to its fullest.  Just typing that makes me smile.  I have resolved that if people ever come to that conclusion about me, they just have it all wrong!  I spend a whole lot of time dreaming and wishing for what I want to be and very little time making headway.  Everything looks SO GOOD on paper!  Unfortunately for me, many times, that is where it stays.  God bless my husband who knows this about me and loves me anyway!

I am an all or nothing kind of girl.  We have a garage to clean out.  Every time I go out there, I see huge piles of things I don’t even remember accumulating.  It is a daunting picture.  So generally, I shut the door and just find the room in the house that creates the illusion that I am organized and clean.  I am drawn to the rooms that take my thoughts far away from that garage.  We have lived in our home for over a year and a half and yet still park outside.  Wow!  I actually just made myself laugh out loud at how silly that sounds!  

You know what I have found though?  Anywhere I plant myself, clutter follows pretty close behind.  Ugh!  We are such strange creatures!  

I find my heart is the same.  I have a lot of junk to sort through.  I seem to think I can suppress it until I have to deal with it.  But then I find that suppressing it has never helped anyone.  It is like shoving things into a closet time and time again in order to clean up a room.  I feel better because I don’t see any messes.  All my things are ‘picked up’.  I can relax and enjoy my cozy little home.  That is, until the day finally comes.  I have stuffed so many things in that closet and it can no longer contain my overflow.  I open the door to grab (or hunt for) one item and the heaping pile has turned into a ginormous avalanche that can no longer be ignored.

I have a choice to make.  I can either try to stack everything back into the closet in a way to avoid another mishap (which WILL happen).  Or I can take that time to put a dent in the mess.  To deal with what I have ignored for so long.  Even if it is putting away ten things, that is ten things no longer contributing to the mess.

 

The other thing I realize is I am not always going to be the one who opens that closet.  I am not the only one that could fall victim to the avalanche that is inevitable.  What if it is our children?  What if it is my husband?  

The truth is, whether it is physical clutter or emotional.  It WILL affect others around us.  What we store up will eventually be exposed…and it can be ugly!  It can hurt people we never intended on hurting.  I have no idea where this blog post finds you today, but it finds me in a place of discovery and hope.  Discovery that I do not have to fix everything today, but I can certainly DO something to start the process, instead of MAKING PLANS to do my best. Hope that God has given me another day to make some headway.  What a gift!  And yet too often, I waste it. 

What I am most excited about in this discovery?  I am not alone.  My Heavenly Father knows my weaknesses.  He sees my trouble spots.  He is aware of my tendencies.  He truly gets my longings to do better.  He even understands my intense desire to avoid the work and be able to snap my fingers to fix everything so I can start fresh.  What I love about Him is He knows me and He loves me anyway.  He knows if it didn’t take some time and effort, I would never learn from my experiences.  I would find myself in the same mess all over again.

God truly wants us to DO and BE our best in all aspects of life.  But He loves us too much to just give it to us.  He wants to be there for the journey to help us sort through the things we don’t need to carry with us.  He has our best interest at heart and sees the BIG picture, when all we see is a pile of stuff.  The pile of stuff that, once dealt with, opens our eyes to bigger and better things.  

 

So let’s get moving!  Let’s set our minds to BE the change we want to see.  Even if you only spend five minutes of your day doing so, you are five minutes further than you were this morning!