Cleaning Up

My life, it seems, is actually a span of many seasons.

I got to spend almost a week with her in her beautiful, clean, and organized home. The time was refreshing on many levels, and just what I needed. 

While I was away, when he wasn't at work, my amazing husband dedicated much of his time to painting our walls (to cover up the artwork my children had decided to display in just about every room and corner of our home). It was great to come home to clean walls...but it pushed every bit of our clutter right out into the center of our house. 

The contrast to the pristine, organized environment I'd just left was staggering and overwhelming. What this means, unfortunately, is that I spent much of my first day home crying instead of enjoying my people.

But God...His timing is always so perfect. While I was in Florida, I'd also finished the book I'd been reading (The Search for Significance, by Robert S. McGee), and had finally claimed freedom from the shame I'd been dragging around with me for years (you can read more about that in my last post, Rekindled). 

For as long as I could remember, I'd been bearing the weight of that shame and hopelessness, telling myself (in many areas of my life) that I just didn't have the ability to be any different: this was just how things were, attempts to change were futile. Of course, those weren't always my conscious thoughts, but the feelings lurked way down deep, lying in wait to sabotage any attempts I might make at actually being different.

But now, having claimed freedom, I came home to a place where I had to do something about it. I'm starting to sense a pattern in the way God works: He's all about the object lesson. He's not going to teach you anything without immediately giving you a way to practice what you've just learned.

And so, I came home to chaos, and I knew it was time to handle it.

At first, it seemed kind of easy. Despite much evidence to the contrary, I thoroughly enjoy organizing and employing organizational systems. Slowly, I started bringing order to places: the linen closet, the pantry, the food storage containers, the medicine cabinet and bathroom shelves, and that one section of cabinets in the kitchen things just sort of get tossed into.

However, I became deeply discouraged because, while I was making great progress in purging and organization, the parts of the house that are actually in view were still a wreck! Finally, I threw myself face-down before the Lord and just cried out: "God, this is so hard! I am trying to follow You diligently, but I gotta tell ya, it doesn't look like it's making a bit of difference! I'm getting so frustrated. It doesn't feel like this is EVER going to come together!"

God answered me quickly and succinctly: "Alissa, changes that last rarely come quick or easy."

When I related that back to Josiah, he just laughed and said, "Because, 'If it was easy, we wouldn't need Jesus,' right?" Man, I hate it when my own words come back to bite me in the butt, but at least they're accurate. (For any new readers, that's a phrase I've used time and again, both in writing and in person. My man knows me so well.)

God also keeps bringing this scripture to mind:

So let us not get tired of doing what is good.

At just the right time we will reap a harvest of blessing

if we don't give up.

Galatians 6:9 (NLT, emphasis added)

Thus, the efforts continue, day by day, piece by piece...slow and steady may just win the race after all.

But even as I wrote this, God showed me something else about my story (He's so cool like that). I had expressed to a couple friends that progress looked so slow because I had to purge and organize the hidden places first - places like closets and pantries - because otherwise, when I went through the larger, everyday places, I wouldn't have places to put things. There would be no order and the cycle would just continue.

The same thing has been happening in my heart in recent months. God removed me from just about anything that looked like progress and performance on the outside, so he could do some much-needed purging and healing on the inside, deep down in the hidden places. Now, slowly, that work is coming out, changing things in my home first, and then gradually working its way outward.

Change can't be real or lasting if it doesn't first occur inside, in the deep, hidden places - either in our hearts or our homes.

That's the plan for now: to continue to make slow, steady progress from the inside out, knowing if I just keep at it, depending on God for direction and strength, I'll eventually reap a harvest of blessing, in my life and in my home. 

It's hard, ya'll. Sometimes it's intensely painful, and at times, I'm discouraged, but man...in the end, it's definitely worth it. 

Rekindled

It's been more than 5 months since I've written. It feels foreign and like coming home, all at the same time.

My last post was written in late October, just before I attended the Ezer Collective, a Christian Women's leadership training, in Minneapolis. I was petrified walking in. There were writers, authors, CEOs, pastors...and people like me, just learning what it means to walk in their given assignments.

On the first night, our hostess, Jo Saxton, told us to start walking in our gifts. If we have been told by God that we should speak, we are speakers. If we have been told we should write, we are writers. Throughout the weekend, I became comfortable with saying, "I'm a writer and a speaker." By the last day, I felt it deep within me; it was part of me.

Then, I had to come home, and I bawled. I missed my husband and kids, but I didn't know how to bring my new "identity" as a writer and speaker home to meet my "identity" as a wife and a mom. They felt awkward and separate.

When I got home, I could tell Josiah was NOT okay. I thought, That's okay. He'll get used to this new me eventually. This is my purpose, and he'll learn to help me walk in it.

If you haven't caught on yet, friends, what you're witnessing in the retelling, is what it looks like to crash and burn upon reentry.

Josiah and I had many conversations over the next few days, all of which I chalked up to his fear, until he said: "I'm afraid this speaking thing is going to take off, and when it does, you're never going to want to be here because you already don't want to be here. Even when you're here, it feels like you're not."

I can't tell you how much it hurts to even write those words...because they were true. I didn't want to be here. I wanted to start my journey, go all the places,  and do all the big things. I wanted to do something that made me feel successful, unlike this mom thing, which I feel dreadfully unprepared for and not-gifted in.

And with those words that hurt so much, but desperately needed to be said, the demolition began. Layer upon layer of inaccurate perceptions and false identities had to be knocked down and scraped away. I have spent more time sobbing on my knees, crying out to God, than I even thought was possible.

I was searching for worth in everything BUT Christ; spending my time as a wife and a mom felt like something that was just holding space until I could get to my real calling, my real purpose, my real identity.

But slowly, God showed me that my identity has nothing to do with any title I hold other than Daughter of the King...not even "wife" and "mom." My worth is completely unassociated with anything I have ever done or will do.

There is nothing I could ever do to be more pleasing, loved, accepted, or forgiven. Because I have accepted Christ and call Him Lord over my life, I am already "deeply loved, fully pleasing, totally accepted, and completely forgiven;"* there's nothing I could do to earn it or lose it.

Before all this, I could have told you that, but I didn't really believe it. There were places deep down I hadn't let God touch or heal, so I toiled desperately and frantically to be pleasing, loved, and accepted by everyone around me.

But all of it was empty and left me aching inside for what was real. It was there all the time in the person of my Savior; He just had to scrape away all of the other stuff first.

I've spent the last 5 months learning to enjoy His presence and hear His voice, to just be present and enjoy what He's given me. I've spent 5 months sheltered, hidden, letting him slowly, and often painfully, strip, scrape, and scrub.

Now, He says it's time to take a step forward, on wobbly, new legs, but much firmer ground.

This week, as I was studying 2 Timothy, a verse pierced my heart. From logos to rhema, it became a word just for me:

Therefore, I remind you to keep ablaze the gift of God

that is in you through the laying on of my hands.

For God has not given us a spirit of fearfulness,

but one of power, love, and sound judgment.

2 Timothy 1:6-7

The Greek word there for "keep ablaze" is anazopyreo, and it means to rekindle the remains of a fire, to stir up the embers of a fire that looks almost dead, and give it new life.

It's time to start sharing again, to rekindle the fire in my heart to share His words.

There are 2 things I'm 100% sure of as I walk forward. The first is that I'm going to mess up. I'm going to make mistakes and lean on old habits every now and then. At times, I'm going to fail. But what makes all of that okay is the second: He is with me every step of the way, loving, steering, and correcting.

I don't have to be perfect or enough because He already is, and that's enough for me.


*This quote is from a book which helped me greatly along on this journey: The Search for Significance, by Robert S. McGee. If you haven't read it, you should. If you have, then you already know.