Weather report - Highs in high 50's - low 60's; occasional rain.
It is Sunday and we have been home in our little farmhouse this afternoon. Matt continues to renovate and help me make this house feel home-y and warm. We decided for as along as we are here we want to make ourselves comfy at home and a place where we would like to come to. So there's new, brown speckled carpet throughout the first floor which is soft and hides the country earth so well. Our bathroom has a fresh coat of paint and Matt expanded our bedroom (don't ask me how) so it's become a great extra hang out place.:-). The front porch that is almost the width of the house seems to expand the living room and there's a garage now that will make this winter an entirely different experience. :-)
Yesterday it rained like I haven't seen before. Literal non stop rain from sunup to sundown. Our rural roads became soft and trenches formed from tire tracks. With all the building in the front of the house, there's no real grass but just dirt and lots of it. With the rain, the dirt has softened and deepened with thick, clay-like mud that one could very easily lose their flip flop in. (I know this from personal experience :-). The days are noticeably shorter and the cooler weather reminds us that winter is not that far off. And it's ok. It's been a long summer with warm days and lots of activity. I have short term memory loss of winter. I don't remember feeling cold right at this moment. I do remember feeling closed in. I remember feeling stuck inside for months because the outside was too overwhelming to be in. That's what I do not welcome in the next few months. But for today? I drink in the green... :-)
This season is new and uncharted in my life. Cosette is being homeschooled for her 7th grade year; I've put my Master's program on hold; and I find myself longing to simplify. I don't know how it will all be played out in my life but I know it will have impact on how I'm energized and how I guard my heart. It's also a term that has gotten so overused. It has so often referred to organizing systems and checklists and cute little Pottery Barn spice racks in the kitchen. For me in the past, simplifying felt like stripping away every extra activity so I can manage the absolute essentials. Kids. House. Hubby. Anything else, even personally restful things and personal callings all took second chair in order to "simplify" and.....manage. I love my family but I have, truthfully, felt more like a manager than a mother at times. I felt like I got through my day, but I never felt like I fully lived that day. I felt accomplished in my to do lists and tasks, but emptier at the end of the day. The work horse mentality in me got fed but the heart was left starving. I don't think that's what it means to "simplify".
This season, I am responding to the small, quiet, constant nudges of my soul. That place that reminds me I was created for something more than just effort and endless stuff to do. It's not something I have listened to much in my life, in all honesty. I have a "not enough" voice that speaks a lot louder. It tells me that I am important, worthwhile, and dare I say, loved if I am all things to all people, accomplished, have-it-all-together. I even battle that in my life as a Christ follower. God has often been seen not as the Lover of my soul but the one keeping the treadmill set. So I respond to every need, every daily demand, stretched thin, exhausted, and yet not being able to silence the "not enough". But you can only do that for so long. I have a longing to listen to my life better. To live, contribute, and love according to the truest sense of me. To respond to the dreams and pulls and instincts of my soul.
This season I'm choosing not to get a better calendar or time management system. I'm choosing not to figure out how to get more done in my day. This season I'm choosing to listen.
Our time here in North Dakota has been used to bring me to this new place. I can't explain why but I think part of it is because there is very little to silence out the yearning of my heart. There's not a lot going on. Not many people. Not many lures. I can hear a little clearer.
I know I'm in for a fight :-) I have said that I feel pulled in so many directions yet honestly, I'm not pulled. I run to those places and people where I can show up, reveal my Superwoman costume and save the day. I like that role. I like how it fills me. Yet it empties me just as fast. And in the end it doesn't help those I love. They don't get stretched and they get me, emptier with less to offer. The fight to reconnect with what my life is really saying is daily and relentless. Thankfully, a Voice greater speaks as I give Him ears to hear.
"I have come so that you may have life, in all its fullness....", the Good Shepherd speaks.
"You are fearfully and wonderfully made...", the Father instills.
"Our hearts are restless until they have found their rest in You....." the ancient writer St. Augustine reminds.
It's lonely here in Ryder, ND. Maybe there's more in the loneliness than I thought. Maybe in this place where the stars are so evident in the dark sky, the listening is better in this quiet.
It's a good thing. I pray for courage to live more fully with what I hear.
May we all.........
