Busy Bee

Back when I was in college, a very well-meaning person that I respected once told me "if he can't make us bad, he'll make us busy." Well I took this to heart, dang it. I tried off and on to stop being so dang busy, with very little success. So I just kept on being busy and feeling guilty for it. This had been going off and on for about 6 years or so.

About a year ago, the familiar twinge of dissatisfaction with my "busy" trait had resurfaced and I had been feeling convicted. When I was praying about this one day, God spoke to me and very clearly told me: I made you this way. And it was like a switch had been flipped and I felt free from the guilt that I had associated with being busy. I was relieved, to say the least.

So. I quit worrying so much about being busy and set about enjoying it. And do you know what I did with this new found freedom of mine? I started doing more stuff.

Hm...

Somehow, it just made sense to me that I could release myself to DO more because God had set me free from feeling guilty for doing so much. Go whole hog, you know?

And what do you think happened? Yep, I got tired! And started feeling guilty (and frustrated) for doing so much that I made myself tired. Haha. Anyone seeing the irony here? Ah! I totally abused something God meant for good. I had eaten too much ice cream at the ice cream truck. Geez. Thankfully, God loves me too much to just zap me off the planet.

This happens to me often, actually. I get all excited about sewing something or reading a new book (two things I've actually been doing the past few weeks that have been wearing me out, hah). Then I dive in 100% and forget about cooking, cleaning the house, and sometimes grocery shopping for a few days or a week. Then when I finish whatever I was working on, or at least take a break from it, I resurface and realize I need to cook dinner but there are no groceries. Ack. What's a busy girl to do?

When I get like this, I know what my treatment is. To sit at the feet of Jesus and listen, reflect, and unwind my tightly-wound self. It's my therapy. Saying things like: Why do I do this? Why do I like being busy? It separates me from God, I know this. But why did He make me this way only to allow it to separate me from him? Ugh. I must be thick or something, but I just keep struggling with this.

Anywho. I just decided to dump it out there on the internet for all to see. One day I will have clarity about this and I will probably share it. Until then...

Cleaning-Out Saga Continues...

Don't think I haven't been thinking about Round 2 of cleaning out my house. It's been heavy on the brain lately. Having never done such a massive clean-out before, I had no idea how long this could take. See, I got tired and overwhelmed after the huge garage sale, giving away of 12 or so garbage bags full of baby clothes, taking a few piles to Goodwill. I've discovered that some things take quite a bit of time to think about before you know exactly what to do with it. Where to donate it, how to sell it, or if you want to keep it. So I've made a guideline for myself to follow: don't ever make decisions in a hurry and don't make decisions about someone else stuff.

One choice I made that hasn't had the dramatic (negative) impact my husband feared it would is: whittling our dishes in the kitchen down to what we use in a day or two. I now wash the top rack of the dishwasher (always hand-washing plastics, cookware, and cutlery) each day or two because the entire dishwasher was difficult to fill up. This made a huge difference in what I was able to see and retrieve from our kitchen cabinets. They were entirely too full of plates, bowls, and cups for me to get something out without other things either falling or having to be shoved to one side. I also sold all but a very few of the girls sippy cups in the last garage sale. I boxed up half of the plastic drinking glasses we have use daily since we got married without hubby noticing, making room for the fun glass and pottery glasses we have always enjoyed using but bypassed for the plastics. Now we use the glass more often, paying more attention to aesthetic detail than in the past.

These are the kinds of changes that have lasting effect on the de-stuffing process. I don't feel like I'm saying to myself "now why did I get rid of all those cups?" when I held on to them for months and we didn't even miss them. I'm applying the same principle to kids toys, clothing, home decor, toiletry products... and probably more that I am not willing to make my brain come up with at the moment.

Progress! It's not happening as fast as I initially imagined it would. But it's happening and our entire family is benefiting from it.

Lookie here

After writing the previous post, I came across this site and spent some time on it. It's quite interesting, take a peek:

http://rethinkingchristmas.com/

Why I Celebrate Christmas

I've been reading all sorts of things lately about how to honor Jesus this Christmas season. for quite some time, I have been saddened by the commercialization that now surrounds Christmas. But it wasn't until I had children that it really started to bother me. Possibly because I now see the world through different lens and I'm concerned about a lot more than just the commercialization of Christmas.

I'm the sort-of person who likes to imagine taking things to the extreme. I think all about how I should take drastic measures, but never really fully take those measures. My natural first thought was: Well crap. Since Christmas has been so commercialized should we even celebrate it like the average Americans at all?

Now would be a good time to mention what Christmas was like for my husband's family and mine. To sum it up in one phrase, I would say Christmas meant "time with family." This looked very different for Dan's family than it did for mine. His family celebrated Christmas Eve with a quiet evening opening presents and enjoying yummy soup with their immediate family (they were 16+ hours away from the rest of their family). Christmas Day was celebrated with Santa and a special lunch (or dinner? I can't remember right now). Christmas with my family meant a huge celebration Christmas Eve with cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even neighbors. My parents threw a big bash every year and I loved it. Christmas Day was celebrated with Santa, breakfast at my grandparents house and the opening of presents, then a huge late lunch with the same aunts, uncles, cousins as the night before. Christmas night was the most quite part of the whole two days.

Ok, back to my question. Should we even celebrate it at all?? I entertained this for about 30 seconds, thought about what I wrote above, and decided not to celebrate would be ludicrous. Besides, scripture has recorded times of celebration that are unlike anything we can imagine. I have always been impressed with the fact that in the book of Ester, Queen Vashti was striped of her title after she refused to parade herself before King Xerxes guests that had been partying for the past 180 days. 180 days of the finest wine, food, music, entertainment... I mean, seriously, college students, bar hoppers, and movie stars everywhere have nothing on the way they used to party.

So, this makes me feel better about spending a measly 30 days with special decorations in my home, baking cookies for the neighbors, and buying gifts for the one's that I love. All in preparation to celebrate the birth of the single most important person to walk this earth. It's what we do leading up to the party, the finale.

As for gifts, my husband and I have decided to give very few gifts to our children and to each other. As my children grow older, we will continue to have dialogue about Christmas and what we, as followers of Jesus, will be celebrating. We've still invited Santa into our home and asked that he leave one or two small gifts plus a stocking (he left them for my family and they were always a huge hit). But receiving material things will play a small roll in what we'll be celebrating. We'll focus on giving to others and receiving God's gift of Jesus.

Tonight as my two daughters and I were driving around looking at lights, we stopped at a massive moving display of Santa's workshop. There were several little elves, Santa, and lots of toys piled around. My 3 year old looked at the display, admired it, and then said "Mom, where's Baby Jesus?" A smile spread across my face, an ounce of satisfaction, and then I was humbled by her innocent understanding of Christmas.

My "plan" this year was to start an advent calendar and do 25 days of giving. I had high hopes! I made my list, but that was as far as it got. Now that it's the 14th of December, my plan is to write some of them on slips of paper, put them into a glass jar, and we'll have a countdown to Jesus' Birthday Party. [I thought about doing the 12 days of Christmas, but then researched it and found that the 12 Days of Christmas technically start the day after Christmas.] In the years to come, I vow to be more organized in November. My 3 year old and I decided that we wanted to throw Jesus a birthday party and make him a cake. To eat, of course! So that's what we're going to do.

I hope that you all have a very Merry Christmas!

Good Post:

sorta wish I wrote this post

http://mnmlist.com/needless/