"God Made Dirt, Dirt Don't Hurt"

Happy Tuesday, everyone! If you live in Georgia, then I'm sure you are doing the happy dance right along with me because the sun is out today! After a gloomy, stormy day yesterday, it is refreshing and encouraging to see some sunshine.

This weekend was quite a busy one for me and I got a lot done. My biggest accomplishment by far was cleaning the house. I don't say the world cleaning lightly. To be more accurate, I should probably say I spent all of Saturday scrubbing the house.  I am the kind of person who likes organization and for everything to be in its place. I don't like things on the floors and I can say that most of the time my house is picked up and not a disaster zone. But, I don't enjoy actually cleaning: wiping things off, vacuuming, mopping, sweeping, getting down on my hands and knees and scrubbing the bathroom, etc. Nope, that's not really my thing. One of the joys of our new home is the space while one of the challenges of our new home is the space. We love having more room, but every wife knows the more space you have, the more there is to clean. Let's just say I haven't made this "deep cleaning" thing a ritual or a weekly ordeal. I definitely should, but I'm just not there yet. With all that being said, although the laundry was done and everything around the house was picked up, I was shocked at how long it took me to clean a seemingly put together home. I literally cleaned every surface of our house (knowing that it will be some time before this "spring cleaning fever" strikes again).  Throughout my cleaning venture, I discovered my house was a lot dirtier than I expected and the process of really getting the house to really "shine" was much more time consuming than I would have guessed.

The process of "deep cleaning" my house reminded so much of life, especially our spiritual lives. How often do we breeze through without taking the time to focus on the details?  It's easier to skip over the mess and hard work that we know would be involved in cleaning it up. You can glance at your spiritual life like I glanced around my house and convince yourself that there's nothing more to be done, but we all know that's not true. It takes courage and honesty to take a self-inventory of our spiritual lives and it's scary to see what we might find. We know that God is calling us to dip deeper and push harder, but that requires facing what can sometimes be a dirty mess.We would rather go on in ignorant bliss than deal with all the emotions and fears that lie within those crevasses and cracks. God is challenging us to stop going through the motions and really let Him prune us and put us through the fire, so that we can come out molded into something even better on the other side. Exposing the buildup of gunk in your life to God is scary, but that's where the blessing is. We don't want Him to be like a guest in our house and pile all of the junk under the bed before He comes over. We need to be transparent about our spiritual lives with the Lord in order to be transformed. In the Bible it says that God "makes beauty from ashes". He takes the "dirt" in our lives and turns it into something beautiful. He looks at the things we aren't proud of, the things we regret, and the things we aren't very good at and then smiles at us, reassuring us that He loves us no matter what. That love is what makes us whole again. That love is what cleanses and renews us. Only God has the power to do that. Hiding those darker spots in our lives won't give God the opportunity to do something great with them.

Like I said, it's easy to go through the motions when it comes to your faith. It's easy to do the parts that come easily for you and avoid steps of faith that you know will be hard and require work.  It's easy to hide from the "dirt" in our lives without ever exposing it to God because we just don't want to deal with it. And it was easy for me to go on for months glancing at my house convincing myself that it was "clean". I knew how much work it would require to get it where it needed to be. I knew I would find spots along that way that I wasn't proud of. I knew I would find more dirt than I cared to see. But at the end of my Saturday, my house looked good! After a lot of scrubbing and accepting that I really don't do it as much as I need to, those dirty spots were washed away. The awesome thing about Jesus is that the hard work is only found in getting up the guts to share our whole selves with Him, dirt and all. After that, He does the work. He loves us. He accepts us. He transforms us. All we have to be is willing to "clean our house".

Never Satisfied

It's a sickness, an epidemic that has taken over our country without us even realizing it.

Every day it becomes more and more apparent to me how our society runs. We live in an "est" culture. We want the best, the biggest, the happiest, the smartest, the prettiest, the richest, etc. Nothing is ever good enough for us; we want it all. It's not necessarily a bad thing to desire more and work hard to get there, but when not having the "est" of everything takes over your being, then it's a problem. Why are we never content?

This issue is especially prominent in women today. There is something wired in us that makes us see something great happening to someone else and instead of being happy for them, we instantly get jealous. We want that for ourselves, despite all of the great things we already have. I see it in my friends and I see it in myself. If we are single, then we want a boyfriend. If we have a boyfriend, we want to get engaged. If we are engaged, we want the biggest ring and the best wedding. Even if we are blessed with a wonderful marriage, we want a house, a baby, a new car....it never ends. What is so sad about this mindset is that it takes away from what we do have. Each of us have countless blessings at our fingertips whether it is a job, a child, a parent, a friend, or anything that makes us happy. Don't get so caught up with what's happening in everyone else's life that you miss all the awesome things happening in YOUR life. It's dangerous to start lusting after what everyone else has. You suddenly look at your life and feel like it's not good enough. I'll be honest, this makes me really angry. I see so many amazing women who have a great job, a great boyfriend, or a great group of friends, get down on themselves because they are missing that one thing in their lives. They instantly feel unworthy. That's a distorted point of view and it's not the truth.

It's a sickness, an epidemic that has taken over our country without us even realizing it. It relentlessly controls our minds and our lives and it has got to stop. Envy steals contentment from our hearts. It takes the peace out of our lives and replaces it with jealousy and ultimately, hate. Hate for the people in our lives who have what we want and hate for ourselves for not having or not being enough. Don't let it. We each need to take a step back from this toxic outlook that we have been sucked into and realize all that we do have. We need to take up an attitude of contentment and thanksgiving for the wonderful gifts we have been given. Each of us is so blessed and beautiful, on the inside and outside. Remember that. Don't let your life be in a constant state of bitterness because of what you lack. Make an effort each day to count your blessings and be thankful for where you are at. Rest in what you have accomplished and where you are headed. As women, we have got to make this change and set an example of a thankful heart for the people around us and for generations to come. This green eyed monster is only going to get bigger the more we feed it.

Take a stand today and open up your eyes...your life is beautiful.

Ch-Ch-Changes

My husband recently told me that the longer he is married to me, the more he realizes how much I don't like change. This statement caught me off guard, but after thinking about it for a few seconds, I wholeheartedly agreed. I really don't like change.

They say that the only thing that remains constant in life is change. That it is really the one thing you can always depend on happening. The older I get, the more rapidly the changes come. In the past few years, I have had many, many friends get married, move, have babies, and change their whole lives; myself being one of them. My life has also been altered in hundreds of small and large ways over the years. And let's just say those changes weren't usually joyfully embraced. I have always struggled with things being different from what they once were. I like the comfort of routine and dependability. I cling tightly to the things and people that I love, expecting them to always be there. In fact because of that, I have major issues with giving up on any kind of friendship. I will put the effort into it until the very end, because I just can't accept losing a friend or things changing between us. Even if it's for the best.

This fear of change has been very present in my life recently. My very best friend just moved to Florida. She is the first friend I've had move to another state and I have to admit that saying it's been tough would be an understatement. I have really been having a hard time accepting this change and all the other changes that have come along with it. My brother is also interviewing with a company in Dallas, Texas. There is a good chance that he will be moving to Dallas very soon. My first reaction was pure happiness for him. I am really proud of him for going after what he wants. But once I realized that him moving away is a very real possibility, I instantly became on the verge of tears. It will be a tough change to deal with when the time comes. I am being forced to open up my eyes to the reality that I am getting older and people do move away from where they grew up especially at this age. Things aren't going to stay the same forever. This isn't a foreign concept to many, but to me it feels like another language entirely.

Coming face-to-face with my fear of change each day, I am learning that it is never going to go away. It's here for good, so I might as well embrace it. I must keep moving forward while letting certain people or situations go along the way. I am slowly accepting that it is actually healthy to allow change in my life. It's a good thing. Change has brought me to the place I am now and I must say I'm pretty darn happy here. The good things in life can't come without discomfort, without hard times, without change. So I will slowly loosen my grips and let go, knowing that the best changes are yet to come.