Closet Overflow

Has this ever happened to you?

Someone is coming to your house, unexpectedly (like in an hour), and your place is a mess!  You go through the house and do the quick clean - shoving everything in a closet.  They come over - you enjoy their company.  Share stories, laugh, eat, drink.
You say your goodbyes.

Then, a similar situation happens again.
You do the quick clean and put more items in the closet.  You're beginning to run out of space because what you had put in there is still there.

The cycle goes on until the closet can't close anymore.
Then we look for other closets to hide our stuff.

Sooner or later what was put in the closet has to be dealt with.

Isn't that just like our lives?

We go and keep putting things in "closets" or "compartments" in our heart and say, "I'll take care of that later."

We put away our hurts, we shove down our disappointments, we hide our pain, etc.  we keep piling them up on top of each other but, as long as we can still close the door, we think we're doing fine.

Keep putting the smile on.
Keep going through the motions.

Until one day the door won't close anymore and the "stuff" begins to spillover into other areas of our lives.

Have you been there?
I know I have.

Since the beginning of this year, I have been going through areas of my home and getting rid of things.

One drawer
One closet
At a time

It's a symbolic gesture of cleaning out my heart, as well.  Getting rid of layers of stuff.

One prayer

One forgiveness

One healing 

At a time

Difficult, yes.
But, not impossible.

I've been ready.

Are you ready -
To clean out your "closet"?

What do you need to finally let go?
What is taking up unnecessary space in your life?

The Miracle

This past weekend was Easter but it was also my daughter's birthday!

I started thinking about her and the miracle she is..

When I was pregnant I knew there was something wrong

You know what I am talking about, Moms?  Our knower just kicks in..this pregnacy was different than my first.

I kept my fear inside and didn't share except to God in my prayers.

One day I woke up and told my husband that I think I needed to go to the hospital to get checked.

They ran their tests and were about to send me home when one doctor said to try a different exam.  There was no amniotic fluid and rushed me to have an emergency c-section.

I was so scared

Scared for my little girl

The rest of that night is a blur

bits and pieces in my memory

I saw her several hours later with that little face poking through her swaddle.  Flat face with a small button nose and large dark eyes..

I immediately felt to protect her..

My husband telling someone to pray that the doctors were concerned.

She didn't look like a normal baby but was beautiful

Ear closed up

One leg bowed

Flat faced

No neck

But she was mine!

The doctor kept doing test upon test on her until there was no place else to cut on her little feet.

5 days..

5 days of being told she would never be like her older sister

5 days of being told I needed to face reality

There was something inside that wouldn't let me settle for that.
I prayed.  Her Dad prayed.
We brought her home.

I looked at my little angel.
She was so good.
Slept through the night and was never fussy.
Prayed
and
Prayed

and then
we started to see a miracle

the ear that once was closed opened
the neck that wasn't was
the flat face began to take shape

but those beautiful eyes never went anywhere

I remember taking her to visit my OB/GYN and he cried (literally) saying this couldn't be the baby he delivered.
Then my husband and I took her to the geneticist @ 2yrs of age and she was in shock.  My daughter was writing on a chalkboard and playing games..everything they said she wouldn't be able to do.

Now my sweetheart celebrated her birthday the big 13!  Oh my!  What a privilege it has been being her mother.  Watching this miracle grow into a young woman. 

It's wonderful to look back and see the good that has happened in your life.  She is my reminder that there is 'Nothing that is impossible for God'...even when it looks like there is :)

What are some of your moments? 

Design Your Life. Design = Passion.

 I am so honored to have Courtney Walsh do a guest blog for Modern Earth Design.  She is an accomplished writer & author, playwright, artist, mother, wife, friend and encourager.  You will be inspired by her perspective on life that will cause you to look deep in yourself and make you want to be the person you were created to be. 

 Design Your Life. Design = Passion
~ Courtney Walsh

We’ve always been those people.

You know the ones. Stable. Solid. Not risk takers.

We don’t play the stock market. We don’t jump out of airplanes. We’ve patterned our life after the norm—marriage, house, kids, church every Sunday…

Yeah, we’re boring.

We got married in 1999 and almost immediately started working at a church where my husband continued to work for eleven years. That’s a long time. He made a good living. I didn’t have to work. We had a beautiful family. We’d recently moved into our forever house.

But something was off.

About a year and a half ago, I started to feel this niggling, this there’s got to be more than this. And it made me feel so guilty. We had so much, how could I ask for more? But the more I examined it, the more I realized it wasn’t more I was seeking. It was different. I wanted a different life.

I wanted a simpler life. I even blogged about my search for simplicity. (Long before we actually had any inkling of change...)

I wanted to have a beautiful life. But I hadn’t stopped to figure out what that meant. To me. I knew what it meant to other people, but what did my beautiful life look like?

I wanted uninterrupted time with my family. I wanted to be free of the sense of obligation that had always accompanied me. I always did what I was “supposed to do.” But for some reason, it stopped feeling like the right thing. I wanted creative energy. I wanted nourishment—body, mind and spirit. I wanted to live an inspired life.

After eleven years, we had gotten complacent, and I think I probably whined about it a lot…until the day it dawned on me that we create the life we want. It’s in our hands—no one else’s—so for me to complain about it made no sense. We started to examine the life we were living. And in doing that, we started asking questions. Big, scary questions without answers…

What if we started looking for a new job?
What if we moved away from Illinois?
What if we had to give up our stable paycheck and our forever home in order to have a better life?
What if we made less money? What if our kids changed schools? What if we went somewhere where we didn’t know a single soul?
Are we strong enough?

See, the truth is, we could’ve stayed where we were. We were doing good things, had great friends, our family was close. The life we were living was all we’d ever known. But sometimes “all you’ve ever known” is the problem. When your life becomes something you don’t really want, there’s really only one option.

Change it.

(Photo source)

I’m convinced that if we’d stayed where we were, we never would’ve been challenged (creatively or otherwise) and eventually, I believe it would’ve led to our demise.

In the end, we decided to take the risk. It took nearly a year to figure out what that meant, but eventually, we were led to Colorado where my husband took a different kind of job—one that he’s equally as good at, that challenges him and inspires him. And our entire family came along for the ride. I’m convinced that in many ways, this move saved us. It brought us closer together. We were making grown-up decisions without the input of everyone around us. We’d heard from God and that was what mattered.

But changing your life is kind of like cleaning out a closet. You have to take everything out on the counter and decide what to keep and what to purge. You have to throw away the rotten stuff, the moldy stuff, the stale stuff. And then, little by little, you start putting the rest back in.

Right now, we’re just coming into the stage where we’re “putting the rest back in.” At first, we lived exactly the same way, and we had to stop ourselves and say “No. We’re here for a different life.” We had to constantly remind ourselves that we did all this for a reason. And it would be worth it in the end.

It’s hard to break old habits…and easy to revert back to what you know. But to truly design the life you want, you have to constantly evaluate yourself. What do you want to change? How can you start? Little by little, we’re purging our closet of the moldy stuff and stacking the leftovers neatly inside. Some days it feels like the entire contents of my life are spilled out all over my kitchen, but I know that with a bit of time and energy, I can put it all back together again.

Changing your life doesn’t necessarily happen overnight. It’s a process. But we design the life we want. We decide what to say “yes” to and what to say “no” to. We decide if we’re going to listen to what everyone else wants us to do or become the person we were designed to be. And sometimes it’s messy. And you want to tuck tail and run the other way. And not look back. But when the closet is purged and the mold is removed and the good stuff is neatly stacked inside… that’s when you can take a deep breath of clean mountain air and say “Yep. This is just what I was looking for.”

You won’t likely find us jumping out of planes or even playing the stock market. We’re still the same stable-minded people. But we trust ourselves more now. We believe that our decisions are God-inspired. And we also realize that together, our family is creating the beautiful life, the simple life, the different life we so desired.

One day at a time.

You can read more about our continuing journey on my blog HERE.