My house is almost perfectly clean…about 15 minutes of every week, total.
I’m never caught up on laundry.
I’m always missing a sock or three in every load.
I sometimes act like cleanliness IS next to godliness.
I shared on Monday that I am keenly aware that an organized and de-cluttered home is not my highest calling in nesting. In fact, I can have simplified, highly organized spaces throughout my house, yet be void of the joy that is found in a home that is occupied with the worship of Christ. I truly believe that we honor the Lord with stewardship of our homes, with diligence in our house-cleaning, and dedication to simplification. But, that can’t be the end. It can’t be our ultimate goal, or our sense of daily satisfaction.
So, in response to my own challenge this week to de-clutter in a deeper sense, I’ve focused on one main area:
What I think about.
The truth is, if I want to think on: the Word of God, the Gospel, the greatness of Christ, his faithfulness to me, my high calling as a wife and mother, the joy of my salvation, and the hope of eternity…
I cannot fill my mind with: worldly counsel, self-pity, worry, ingratitude, hope for material gain, bitterness, self-sufficiency, and temporary pleasure.
Those thoughts just don’t co-exist well with a mind given to gratitude for God…did you read yesterday’s post?
Sanctification does not happen formulaically…but it does happen one obedient choice at a time, in His strength, to His glory. And for me, these choices include prioritizing time in the Word, limiting opportunities to compare myself with others online, reading more on the attributes of God than on the attributes of a beautiful home, and listening more carefully to the way I speak to my children and husband, than to the opinions of others.
And, to pray…and not talk about praying.
That’s what I’ve been thinking on…so much so that I hope to make little room for superfluous thoughts to take root.
This week…though I swapped out the kids’ seasonal clothing bins and finally cleaned up our bedroom, there are no before or after pictures for this final week for the real challenge at hand. I have not arrived, nor will I ever, this side of heaven. Yet, God is faithful to complete the work He has begun.
Baby Cinco is just about done bakin’…and my greatest desire is for him to arrive, to a sweet owl room prepared just for him, to a home that functions well in the daily routine, and to a family nest that’s nestled in the verdant branches of the True Vine.
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I’d be so blessed to hear any of your responses to this week’s challenge…our final challenge of Simply Nesting. And if you are still struggling to know how to make changes in your life, be encouraged…our God is at work, and will lead in His time. If you care to share, please feel free to link up to your post on this week’s challenge. For God’s glory, not our own.
Thanks for joining me these last four weeks. It has been fruitful nesting…inside and out! Be blessed!
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I love this reminder and am so blessed by your transparency Ruth…the external can overwhelm the internal without diligence in and of itself…add to that the ease we have of peeking into one another’s lives & it’s a recipe for an entire list of less than lovely traits. Thank you SO much for leading out by example & vulnerability
Hallelujah, indeed inside and out!
I have been closely with you all these four weeks, it has been fruitful for me too (though it was some different kind of nesting
). Thank you so much, my most beloved daughter, friend, and inspirer!
Thank you for posting this, Ruth. I’m always so encouraged by your insights. I am still trying to figure out the place of things like Facebook in my day-to-day. Such a a blessing on one hand.. a distraction on the other. One day at a time, right?!
Much love.
Love this post, I can definitely relate and I have just two boys! One day at a time should def be every stay at home mama’s mantra!
I’ve been traveling the last few weeks, so am just now catching up on your blog. Hope all goes smoothly as you welcome a new little one into your family! The nursery looks great…I especially love the freshly painted changing table. Fab color!
One of the toughest things about blogging I’ve found IS the problem of comparing how creative someone else is, how good someone else is in the kitchen, how someone else’s house looks, who has a garden, who can sew and on and on, and none of that is godly thinking. I mean from the shot time I’ve been blogging, as good of a thing as it can be, I have found I think about myself a lot more, and I don’t like that one bit! I mean in all we do we need to give all the glory to God, and if we aren’t love Him and others first, none of the other stuff matters.
We have to zoom out and focus on the Kingdom, not all this worldly stuff. Not that sewing, and cooking and all those other things are bad or negative, it’s just they can’t be our main focus and we can’t get lost in how good we are at them.