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Crumbs and Clutter

I don’t know about you, but I love the beginning of a new year!  It just feels like I get a fresh start at everything.  I know it’s all in my head, but I really woke up feeling like a brand new person with new gumption and goals on January 1st!  

I made myself a list of things I HAD to do before the kids and I went back to school and then worked like mad last week to FOCUS.  That’s my big challenge.   Cameron asked me once if I stayed home full time, would I just mop the floor everyday, and truly, the answer might be yes!  I have a really hard time seeing around crumbs and clutter to focus on the things that are more important.  And that struggle spills over into everything for me.  I like things to be neat and tidy, but more than that I feel better, more productive, and happier when things are clean.  With 4 tiny pairs of hands between the ages of 4 and 7 constantly working against me, this can be quite a hurdle.  It colors my ability to spend quality time with God, my hubby, my kids, and to make steps towards my dreams.  Heck, it actually keeps me from even finding time to define what those dreams are!

Thank God for friends and family who ask the thought provoking questions that intrude on my whirlwind of activity like a hand smacking a spinning top!  Those moments found me over the break and that, paired up with the New Year, were just the thing I needed to help me determine to take some time to focus on my dreams and determine some action steps to take now.  

I told my family over Christmas that I have the heart of a minimalist trapped inside the body of a hoarder.  No, really.  The struggle is real.  I have been looking with longing at books about minimalism for months… but I didn’t know which to choose, and it just seemed wrong to buy 10 books on minimalism!  Anyone else with me in this???  So I bit the bullet and dowloaded just one on audible, and I came home and cleaned out garbage bags full of toys and clothes to trash or donate.  I seriously think I have saved every toy my five kids have ever been given over the last 12 years!  But not anymore!  This minimalist mama is busting out of this hoarder body in 2019!  And I can’t tell you how much better it feels to walk into their rooms and see their Christmas presents on the shelves where they can actually find them instead of cute buckets full of toy trash or Velveteen Rabbit status toys lining the shelves.  

I was also inspired by a dear friend to do a vision board.  Over the break I clipped magazine pictures while I chatted with family at my parent’s house- because don’t everybody’s parents have better magazines laying around than you do?- and when I got home, my hubby bought me a science-fair-project-like board to glue them on.  I spread out in the living room one afternoon and cut and glued and sorted until I had some semblance of pictures that reflect what is in my heart to pray for this year.  Some parts of the board still need more pics and some need more definition or scriptures, but it’s a start.  A fresh one.  And to my great surprise my littles got excited enough about my messy project that they started tearing out pictures and thinking about their own dreams!  Completely without any prompting from me!  (My hubby already had a vision board because he is waaaay more organized about life goals than I am!).

So while all of this may sound impressive to you (or maybe not, if you don’t struggle with the “whirlwind effect” as I call it… that life spinning out of control short-sightedness that seems to overtake me far too often), the truth is it comes at a cost.  Meaning don’t stop by my house unexpectedly today, okay?  My floor is screaming to be mopped and the kitchen sink is full and oh. the. Bathrooms.  But I am writing.  Right now.  Which is one of my goals.  To write more often.  

And I am determining in my heart and asking God for the grace to be more focused this year.   To live with more intentionality.  I hope as your weekend unfolds you will put on your future glasses-as SLPs like to say when we are working on improving executive function- so that you can see the end goal and the dreams that are buried in your heart perhaps beneath the crumbs and clutter.  Let’s sweep those away together and do some sitting and dreaming and planning and burning deep with those who love us the most.  Here’s to a Happy New Year and new beginnings!



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