I have been reading the many wonderful comments you blog readers have been sending me and I love them!  Keep them coming. And let me know any subjects you want me to write about. This week, I wanted to deviate from talking about how to organize and instead share with you what is going on in my week.  I want you to know the real me and that I have my ups and downs too.            

Whenever I speak to a group, I try to remember to say “I have not arrived”.  In other words, I still struggle just like you in day to day life. Just because I’m a speaker doesn’t mean that I have it all together.  I don’t.  I have a hard time waking up.  I have a hard time wanting to cook dinner every night.  I have a hard time when the car breaks, the washing machine quits working or my daughter brings home a houseful of stuff.

Which is just what happened this week.  I don’t want any of you to think keeping up a house is easy for everyone but you!  It’s hard for us all, just easier or harder for different people.  I write and speak on organization because I am bent that way and I believe God has called me to minister to women: to help encourage them when it feels like life is falling down on them.

But last week my youngest daughter, Grace, graduated from college.  What a joyful milestone!  I spent weeks getting the house “spring cleaned” because family was coming in.  But the day after the graduation, she had to get out of the rental house she and two best friends had been living in and so all the parents began to pack and load cars and clean the little house.  And then we drove three hours back to Frisco and began to unload three “stuffed to the rooftop” cars and the easiest place to put all this stuff was my living and dining rooms and the family room upstairs.  And it is still there. 

I even had a party the next day to honor my mom and let my friends and neighbors meet her and celebrate Grace’s accomplishments and… it was still there.  I just pushed it all in one section so I wouldn’t think about it.  Then the next two days was spent going to the airport to send loved ones back home.  And then yesterday I realized there was at least 12 loads of laundry to do and this stuff, that is now all over the house, would need to be organized.

I turned around, went into my bedroom and took a nap.  Best idea I have had in a long time!

When I woke up, my precious daughter was already working steadily upstairs sorting through all the clothes and saying I didn’t need to come upstairs – she had it under control.  So I washed all the bed linens and watered plants and went through the mail and returned phone calls and all the other things one does when they have been out of town.

Last night, Grace stayed up very late trying to organize her college mementoes alongside her high school ones.  More stuff is everywhere.  Today, as I look in the dining/living rooms there are still bookshelves, plastic drawers, tables, kitchen items, curtains, decorative pillows, etc.  I guess we will have to find a storage unit until she knows where she will be living.  And I need to let it go.  Which means, why let it bother me?  This type of move requires lots of time, patience and energy and the best thing I can do for my daughter is support her and help her with this transition.

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Action Plan:  Our homes, just like our life, can never be perfectly organized.  Life happens.  Stuff happens.  We need to take a deep breath, ask the Lord for His help and energy and then just take it day by day, item by item. Our lives are supposed to be full of the Holy Spirit not full of worry and anger.

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Manna From Heaven:  “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven…a time to tear down and a time to build…a time to weep and a time to laugh…a time to keep and a time to throw away.”  Ecclesiastes 3:1-6

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Emotional Check-Up: Stress is going to happen to us every day, no matter what our occupation.  Here are some ideas to be stress free in 10 minutes:

1.  1. At least once a day sit quietly and do nothing but pray, listen, relax the tension in your body as your neck.

2. Laugh!

3. Listen to good music

4. Think happy thoughts – focus on someone or something

5. Walk for 5 or 10 minutes

6. For 5 minutes, slow your breathing down to six breaths a minute, by taking a slow,deep breath and exhaling very slowly.

7. Relax your body from your toes all the way up your body when you go to sleep and when you wake up.

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Healthy Fit-Fact:  Since most of our illnesses and trips to the doctor are stress induced, perhaps we need to start with what we put into our bodies.  We need to change our stress eating.  The best stress-quashing foods are already made by God not Baskin-Robbins!  Berries are naturally rich in vitamin C, which helps fight increased levels of cortisol, a stress hormone.  A handful of pistachios can lower your blood pressure, which means less of a spike when you get that next rush of adrenaline.  I’ll have more tips like these on eating healthy in future blogs.