When C's Won't Cut It

If you read my previous post, then you know I struggle with discipline in just about every area of my life.

In my housekeeping...

the way I discipline my children...

keeping up with this blog...

my business...

my schedule...

fitness routines...

eating....

I could probably go on, but I think you understand.

I have allowed the many hats I wear to serve as an excuse to be undisciplined. "I just have so much going on? Who can possibly get everything done?"

It doesn't help that many well-meaning people serve me excuses on silver platters. Everyone is very eager to give me grace because of the number of children I have, homeschooling, etc. And to some degree, they're right: I do need to be able to give myself grace and know there are times I just can't do it all. 

But here's the crux of the matter: somewhere, deep inside, we know when have crossed the line from God-given grace to self-given excuses. It's a fine line, but it exists, and if you're honest with yourself, you know.

When I was in school as a child, I was not allowed to get C's. It was unacceptable. To some people that was crazy, over the top, parenting, but I always understood it. I wasn't a C student. I was capable of more. If I was getting C's, there was a good probability it wasn't because I didn't understand, but because I wasn't putting in effort.

However, as a senior, I had one class I could NEVER get an A in, and more often than not, I got C's: AP English Composition. To this day I hate the words "passive voice" because I saw them written on my papers so often (not that it stopped me). I truly tried, though. I worked diligently on my papers, but for whatever reason, I wasn't able to perform beyond "adequate." 

Because my parents knew I was trying my best, earning a C in that class, while disappointing to me, was acceptable. It was my efforts that determined their view of my performance, not necessarily the results. And that, my friends, is the point of all this.

It's all about knowing what you're capable of and whether the effort you're putting forth is truly your best effort. 

In my case, many of my failures have come from a lack of organization. God has seen fit to give me responsibilities in a lot of different areas. I have known for some time that I needed to be more organized in order to thrive, but...even thinking about trying to organize myself was daunting challenge.

Who has the time? I said. I have too many other things to do!

So instead of taking the time necessary to get my life together, I plodded along haphazardly. And when that got too overwhelming, I didn't do anything at all. Scrolling facebook seemed like a much better option than trying to wrap my tired brain around getting more important things done.

I've been acting like an A student making C's and D's, giving the teacher every excuse in the book for why I couldn't get my work done. I was riding the waves of mediocrity like a pro, but the sea of excuses started drying up, and every facet of my life, including my walk with God, suffered.

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing,

while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

Proverbs 13:4

My diligence and discipline were lacking, and my soul craved, but got nothing - until now...

I'm finally making a genuine attempt at organizing ALL aspects of my life. Thus far, I've seen some improvements in a few areas and less in others, but I've seen progress!

Recognizing that progress is actually a big step for me. In the past, I would have ignored any forward progression, keeping a laser focus on the areas where I wasn't progressing. I was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. I would become discouraged and then, like clockwork, I would give up because "it just wasn't working."

Praise God for direction and His amazing grace.

Where in your life are you making progress? Where do you need to? Do you struggle with discipline and organization?

Pray today that God would guide you and order your steps. Pray that He would give you the strength and clarity to make the necessary changes and incorporate HIS discipline into your life.

It may not be easy, and it may be messy, but I promise it will be worth it. 

What is God-discipline?

Most of the time, if I had to choose one topic to write about for twenty-something days, it would be tortuous. I'd waffle back and forth between multiple topics, and finally just choose the one that I felt suited the moment best...or I could say the most about.

This time, however, when I saw the #write31days challenge, I knew exactly what my topic would be: self-discipline. God has been writing the words diligence and discipline on my heart for a while now: every day in a myriad of ways.

And yet...

Self-discipline still didn't seem right for what I wanted to convey. The Bible has plenty of verses on discipline and self-control, but for me, it has a different meaning.

When I think of self-discipline, I think of white-knuckling my way through life, independent and strong. I see a self-made woman, plowing her way through life with steely determination, plenty of grit, and great accessories (shush, it's my vision).

But that's not what my walk looks like.

Don't get me wrong; I've tried desperately to make that happen. I have charged into countless situations determined to succeed, independent and strong. Sometimes, that's worked out great. But more times than not, I've fallen on my face and succumbed to failure.

My walk has looked a lot like smeared mascara on tear-stained pillows and crying out to God in the shower. It has been messy, and not without casualties.

I am not self-disciplined.

Nevertheless, God is teaching me how to lean on him to become disciplined...so I'm calling that God-discipline.

More and more, I'm learning that white-knuckling my way through things on my own just isn't me.

I need His strength to get me through the moments when I just can't get through on my own. 

I need His faithfulness when mine is on the run.

I need His grace when, despite His perfection, I mess it all up.

I need His strong hands to help me back up when I fall.

Over and over, I have sought perfection, and when I couldn't achieve it, I've given up. Why do anything if you're not going to do it right? But that simply meant I wasn't getting anything accomplished because I'm far from perfection.

I used "perfectionism" as an excuse to quit. I have gotten overwhelmed and abandoned countless causes.

But not now.

I heard a quote today by Jim Rohn that said: "Success is steady progress toward one's personal goals." That sounds pretty simple, but he put a lot of emphasis on the word PERSONAL. He said you can't let anyone tell you what success looks like for you. Your goals have to be yours; you can't take on someone else's goals as your own. In that, he echoes loudly what God has been whispering to me for quite some time.

For me, progress, not perfection, is the goal, and successful for me may look entirely different than it does to the world. He is teaching me to lean on Him and trust Him in ALL things, leaving what the world thinks far behind.

That's the hardest part for me, you know: abandoning others' perceptions and opinions, letting my the tapestry of my life take on the colors of His will instead of the those of the threads of public opinion.

Thus, I'm abandoning self-discipline; by myself, I'm not disciplined at all. God is teaching me to look to him for the strength to be disciplined and to His grace and mercy when I'm not. I'm embracing God-discipline.

If you're one of those people who executes goals flawlessly, my posts for the month of October probably won't interest you much.

However, if you're someone like me - one who falls down a lot in the pursuit of God's plan and often has difficulty finding the strength and courage to get back up - I hope you'll follow along. We may just learn and accomplish a lot together.

Dirty Little Secret

I've been avoiding writing this post for a while. I have a whole backlog of other things I want to write on, but for some reason, I felt like God was keeping me from writing them...until I wrote this one.

*sigh* This will not be my favorite.

I have a confession to make - a nasty awful, sincerely gross confession:

I hate to clean bathrooms.

Blech. I don't like to clean my own dirt. Add someone else's dirt (or multiple people's) on top of that, and let me tell you...it makes me cringe.

I don't mean this is something I just don't like doing. It's almost a phobia. I dread it deep within my soul. Do you hear me? Dread.

Or at least I used to.

It was my dirty little secret. Well, probably not so secret if you ever dropped by my house unexpectedly and saw my heart drop through the floor and my eyes widen to anime proportions.

I was ashamed...but apparently not enough to fix the problem. I just swept it under the proverbial rug.

I would clean or straighten ever other area of the house, but that one area...I just couldn't seem to get around to it. Or I would make excuses about it. 

I told myself over and over and over that it would be done the next day...but guess what...didn't happen.

And you know what? It got GROSS. The kids' bathroom is the one most people use when they come over, and I would try to make sure they kept that somewhat straight and clean, but I had a hard time with that, too. It felt so hypocritical to enforce strict bathroom cleaning rules on them when my own was a wreck. 

The soul of the sluggard craves and gets nothing,

while the soul of the diligent is richly supplied.

Proverbs 13:4

I was totally being a sluggard.

And then...God started to work on my heart. I wish I could tell you exactly when the revelation hit me or when I had my breakthrough moment, but I just can't. Slowly, bit by bit, God convicted my heart until I understood very clearly what He was trying to say to me.

"Alissa, sweet girl, you keep telling me to let you go and do big things for Me. You keep begging to let you loose to speak truth for my kingdom, and I want to let you do it! But how can I set you free to do the big things when you're not being obedient in the little things? It's time, Alissa. Obey me in this, and then we'll work from there."

Here that? That's God speaking conviction to my soul...not shame, but conviction that leads to repentance. However, I wish I could say that it led to repentance sooner.

I still lollygagged a bit.

I printed out a cleaning schedule from Clean Mama, and she has bathroom cleaning first thing on Mondays. I put the cleaning schedule on the fridge, and it sat there for about a week. 

Then my dad popped by for a surprise visit on Memorial Day weekend. 

It was a fantastic surprise, and I was so happy to see him. As always, he was super helpful in and around the house. He chose not to go with us to dinner on Sunday evening over at Josiah's parents and surprised us by mowing and weed eating the yard instead, which was a HUGE blessing because Josiah's been working so hard elsewhere that he hasn't had time to get to it (and even pregnant I wouldn't mind mowing, but I have a hard time getting the darn thing started). 

On Monday, he decided to replace the kitchen faucet for us (that we'd already bought, but didn't really know how to put in), and to replace the shower head in the kids' bathroom because they had NO water pressure in there. But because of that, before we went to Lowe's, he wanted to shower in my bathroom.

NOOOOOOOO!!!

I, of course, said that was fine, but I needed to clean it first. He just laughed a little and shook his head and said, "Nevermind. I'll take one in the other bathroom."

"No, no, no!" I said. "Today is Monday, and we're supposed to clean bathrooms on Mondays!"

He laughed at me and called me a liar, at which point I pulled the calendar off the fridge and said, "Nuh-uh! See? I've been meaning to start instituting this cleaning schedule and it says I clean bathrooms on Mondays! I'll be done in just a bit."

So that's what I did. It was Monday, and I cleaned the bathroom...and I felt fantastic. It was like cleansing out my soul...but let me tell ya, that was a nasty soul cleansing.

Since then, I've cleaned my bathroom without fail, almost obsessively. I'm so proud of it. The rest of the house might get messy with the kids all over the place, but my bathroom is clean, and it feels so good.

I almost look forward to it.

Obviously, that's not because I look forward to the task itself...because it's still nasty. But I look very forward to the peace and calm that comes with knowing you're I'm being obedient to God...even in the little things.

"And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here I have made five talents more.’ His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.'" Matthew 25:20-21 (emphasis added)

This has served as a great lesson, for both me AND the kids. Self-discipline isn't about doing things that are easy or that come naturally to us. Self-discipline means teaching yourself to do things we don't want to do or feel we're not naturally inclined toward.

For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant,

but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness

to those who have been trained by it. 

Hebrews 12:11

It's not easy folks. If it was easy, we wouldn't need Jesus...but we do. Oh we do. We can do all things through him.

So there's my dirty confession...and I didn't want to write it. I feed off of approval from other people (not a good thing), and I just knew this would shame me. I could hear my friends whispering to one another (or even just to themselves, "EW...Alissa's dirty" or "Good moms just don't do that."

I felt ashamed my by confession, even though my heart AND my bathroom are now clean. 

But guess what?

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,

who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.

Romans 8:8

That's right, Paul!! Preach it brother!

See, there's a larger lesson to be learned here. We all have our secret, dirty places. Maybe yours is a room in your house or maybe it's a corner of your heart. Let's face it, we all probably have more than one. 

Today, I would ask you to consider where your dirty little secrets lie. Where is God trying to clean up your act, but you're resisting, making excuses, and being hard-hearted? 

Give that over to God. Let Him help you clean out the grime, so you can be renewed by His presence and "yield the peaceful fruit of righteousness."

I promise, you won't regret it.