Hello Bravehearted Beauties! My spirit has been longing to sit still and write, but my body has been trying to whip everything into shape around here! As in cleaning, reorganizing and rearranging from morning till night. This kind of insanity wasn’t my plan, but you know how it is: one thing leads to another, and before you know it, you’ve made a bigger mess than when you started and have to stick with it until it’s done!
Or do you? What if we could just walk away from the mess we’ve made and go outside to play? Just the sound of that delights my heart today, which means I think it needs to happen! {There’s a county fair going on this week, and I bet the girls would love to go. Reorganizing can wait.}
The body {or flesh} can be a tough drill sergeant who flat out ignores the spirit. Have you ever noticed that? Over the last week, I’ve begun to notice something about myself: I’ve changed a LOT since our move from the city to the country, but I can revert back to my old ways in heartbeat. Over the last week, I’ve unintentionally kicked my love of order into high gear…to the point that I’ve ignored all else and demanded that everyone else take part in my drive to get things done.
There’s nothing wrong with the way I’m wired: a lover of beauty, attentive to detail, creative, orderly and peaceful. And there’s nothing wrong with the way you’re wired either. But when we strive and drive to attain these things we love above all else, beware. I’ve heard it said that when we turn our desire into a demand, it becomes an idol. That resonates with me for sure!
My girls are stirring upstairs {so much for getting up early to ease our way back into the school schedule that starts next week!}, but before I go, I want to encourage you to sit with your desires a minute this morning. What is it you desire today? If I’m honest, I woke up desiring that everyone work with me to get the upstairs chaos cleaned up. Everything in it’s place; trash thrown out; unused stuff given away; slipcovers washed; pillows fluffed. But I can tell you that’s not the desire my girls are waking up with this morning. So as you consider your own desire today, hold it loosely. Be aware of the tendency to turn your very good desire into a demand. Take it slow. Play in the middle of the mess. Don’t worry about when it will all get done. {Yes, I’m talking to myself!}
As we wrap up two years of farm life, I have to laugh at my desire for a clean house. It’s just not going to happen here…at least not on the level of high order and perfection that I tried to maintain in Houston. {And thank goodness! That was bondage…and I didn’t even know it!} God has a real sense of humor. It seems that part of the way He is healing me and making me more free is to keep it messy around here. No matter how hard I try, I can’t control the mess. And just in case I think I can, there’s a new and bigger mess waiting just around the corner. That doesn’t mean I’ll give up cleaning all together {and I don’t think that’s the ultimate sign of freedom anyway}, but it means I’m open to being far less demanding and driven.
And when the old me rears up, no worries…God will have His way! He’ll expose me through the funniest things…like Sheltie hair everywhere. I’m not a fan of dog hair. At all. As in, I wanted to give Aslan away yesterday. But today, here he is, rubbing his shedding little body all over my white linen chair just to be near me. Now if that isn’t an opportunity to receive some healing!
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Wishing you more freedom, laughter and play today than yesterday!
Zanne - Hoo, boy, did I need this today. We moved a month ago, and life is still full of boxes and stacks and bags of things that don’t have a place yet, or are only half unpacked, along with the requisite questions of “Do you know where the XYZ is? Have you any idea which box it might be in? Are we even sure we still have it?”
It makes a new kind of mess appear, too, because, since we haven’t figured out where everything goes yet, the family is less likely even than usual to put things away. In some ways I feel like we’re camping out in our own house!
The mess and disorder is driving me crazy. But when I think about my desires–right now they are to spend quiet time with God, enjoy these last two weeks with my beautiful daughter before we send her off to college, to paint, to write, to have quite moments on the porch with my husband while we sip a glass of wine and talk over the day… those are my desires. Somehow I seem to think I can’t have those the way I want to without first wrestling everything else into order.
And then I read your post. And I thought, those things, the things I desire–they are what I should be concerned about putting in “order”. Then the rest will come as it should.
Thank you for re-orienting my sense of order!
Bravehearted Beauty - So thankful to hear my ramblings helped reorient your heart today. And I know exactly what you mean when you say you felt like you had to wrestle things into order before you could enjoy things like sitting on the porch with your husband and a glass of wine. Leaving the mess today to do just that!
Sherry - You are awesome! Your words are so comforting and your posts make me feel normal. And that sweet baby………when your having one of these days…..just stop what your doing, get the dog and y’all go sit on that white chair, love on him and let the hair fly! Laugh and then laugh some more. He too cute and sweet to give away. He loves you. Thanks for all your special words.
Bravehearted Beauty - You made me laugh just reading this! 🙂 Let the hair fly…whew! Deep breath!