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Wrinkly Shirts and Lives

So here we are sitting at the end of the second week back to school in the New Year.  Already a little of the freshness is wearing off a bit like a shirt that was beautifully starched but is starting to soften and wrinkle as it is worn.  The goals and excitement and motivation of January 1 are fading a bit.  The routine already stretching...  things always fit a little better when they have been broken In though...   

Life is full on in swing.  A kid with fever.  A refurbished computer ordered so I can write more but it doesn’t have a new enough operating system to download any program I can write in.  A nasty cold that makes me want to sleep.  Obstacles.  That’s all they are.  Deterrents.  

And as I sit here amid piles of laundry to fold, the sick one watching cartoons,  worship on my earbuds (because I can’t think watching Popples!),  I suspect that these things that seem to crop up and tower in my way are just paper thin.  Tall but thin.  Sometimes life throws us curve balls, but mostly they are just that- curve balls.  We can throw down our gloves and say it will always be this way.  Or we can take our best swing.  The words float through my earbuds...

Make of me a vessel
Make of me an offering 
Make of me whatever 
You want me to be

I think that’s the thing of it.  We can’t give up.  But we can give it up.  The right to be in control.  Of others.  Or sometimes of our circumstances.  The weight of success.  And for me the ease of old habits... the lack of discipline to manufacture change.  But here’s the thing about truth.  It’s always found in tension... usually between two truths as my hubby likes to say.  So we can’t give up the responsibility for our thoughts and choices.  They are ours and no one else’s. A gift from our Maker.  We control where we focus our gaze and what we do with our time.


And I believe that true change comes from both giving up control of outcomes AND making sure to control our gaze by reigning in our distracted thoughts- directing our view to the One whose love for us is perfect.  I want my girls to grow up knowing that they are precious, full of purpose and destiny, and ultimately so loved.  So, gulp, I need to live like I believe that is true for them and for me and determine to focus my gaze this year, this week, this day on the One whose love will bring change in me!  


Trapped inside so we are doing art centers!  This kept them busy for hours today!
We just had to quarantine the stuff the sick one touched. :)
This was at the beginning... I wish I had taken a pic of the mess at the end!


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