Cleanliness

I ended up getting a horrible head cold over the weekend and have been trying to function this whole week.  The weather has been super nice so I sent the kids outside to play in the snow and make the most of it before this big storm comes through!  As I was driving my kids home from Awana last night a thought hit me...

When you are sick there really isn't much that you want to do.  All I really wanna do is sit on the couch and sleep and not move.  Which is impossible as I have 3 little ones depending on me.  So I just shuffle through the day... attempting to find food for the kids to eat, trying to get school done, and putting absolutely no effort into the laundry mountain!  Yesterday I was starting to feel a little bit better and looked at the state of my house and was in shock.  My house was a disaster.  Dishes were all over the kitchen, the kids area downstairs had like 5 spots where I could actually see the carpet, the living room had puzzles thrown all over the floor, the laundry mountain was taller than me, and my sons room had all the books from his book shelf thrown everywhere.  It's so crazy how just 2 or 3 days of living in a fog can make your home a disaster! (So today will be clean up day, since we aren't gonna go anywhere with this snow storm coming through!)

Anyway, back to my thought... after thinking about the state of my house I was thinking about how that applies to our spiritual lives too.  It's so easy for us to sometimes just give up and live the way the world thinks is best.  It's easy, it's convenient, and we are surrounded by it.  The scales grow thicker and thicker the longer we lay complacent in our everyday life.  We say "well this is just how it is now" or "everyone else is doing it and they seem to be getting along just fine"  And then before we know it we are living a life that we don't even recognize.  I was living that about 3 or 4 years ago.  I was buried in diapers, spit up, and a growing bitterness and I was just trying to make it on my own.  The scales that were built up on my eyes were so thick no wonder I couldn't see straight. It wasn't until about 3 month ago that the final scale was lifted from my eyes and I saw that I had been living in pure chaos.  Not the way that God wanted me to live.  Yes, He wants me to live in the here and now, but thats's so I can raise my kids (His kids) in a Godly house... in a home where they know they are safe and loved and forgiven no matter what!  Not in a place where we conform to make life easier and snap at a mistake or spilled milk.  No one said that loving our Father above was going to make life easy...just like no one said that being a parent would be easy. He brings storms to our life to make us stronger, not weaker.  He brings the storms to our life to snap us out of the disaster and to cleanse our souls from the muck and mire of life.

It's so easy to blame God for the mess that our lives are in. "If God is a loving God why would he bring me to xyz...??"  God brings us to "XYZ" to test us.  We don't learn anything if we aren't tested.  We have choices... we can choose the path to follow God through the storm or we can choose to go off course.  If we chose the path that took us off course God never left us, He didn't turn his back to us and say "Good luck with that!" He went down that path with us, trying to grab us and show us that there was a better way.  No matter the choices we made God has always and will always be there.  God finally got a hold of me, and for that I am truly grateful.  He is showing me that living in Him, trusting in Him, having faith in Him is so much better than me trying to wade through the muck that I had been living in.  I can breathe and enjoy life and not feel bogged down.

It will be a constant fight to stay on the path that God has for me because I know how easy it is to slip off track.  But this is a battle that I am willing to fight everyday of my life!  Now, if I could only put that towards cleaning my house.... ;-)