We are preparing for dear visit. Our friends will spend a few days with us! The children clean up their rooms, and everything we won´t need for the next few days goes into the basement. Each room needs place for one or two more people. Camping feeling! Floor space is needed and also the space under the bed must be empty so that you can slide the extra mattress under it during the day. We buy food, clean and organize, so that there is enough room for the many extra shoes and jackets of our guests. (That´s the moment when it really pays off that I am kind of a minimalist!) We are looking forward to our time together! Their Christmas gifts are still waiting under the Christmas tree. This has been a tradition with us for years and we spend New Year's Eve together. We play and drink tea, go for walks and watch movies. Yes, it gets cramped and noisy. And sometimes it gets tight because we only have one toilet for the nine of us! But the good times prevail, and the beautiful moments are what we remember. You get to know each other well when you live so closely for a few days. Everyone has their good and bad sides and it is helpful if you can especially accept your own peculiarities and needs. And when sometimes in between you try to not only be a participant, but also an observer of a situation. And if you say honestly, if you don't want to cook or if you want to be alone for an hour. When you ask for help and when you accept help.
I discovered that I need books and the woods every day. And if possible, also time to write every day. Then I am a better friend, mother and hostess! I need to take time to nourish my soul, time to let Jesus feed my heart.
And just like I did today: not let all the little things on my to-do list stop me from taking care of the important things! If I only write when everything is done, then I will certainly not be able to do it! I want to fill my days with the important things first and not get lost in all the little things! (Small side effect: when I'm writing, the others become more active and do things that I usually did automatically.) How often do we think we can't do the things that we enjoy and that are meaningful to us until we've done all the other, mundane duties? But the list is either never finished or we are too tired in the end! So I want to learn to start with the things that are important to me. And yet not forget that the everyday stuff is just as sacred. Serving my family. Cleaning the toilet, buying food and hanging up laundry. Every work is sacred. But I need the right perspective for this and I only get it if I regularly take a step back and reflect so as not to sink into blunt meaninglessness. What is my motivation? Why am I doing the things I do? Could it be done differently? Simpler? What am I just doing because that's how you do it and everyone has always done it that way? Where can we try new things? Let go of things and change traditions?
Life is an adventure, and we are not only actors, but also directors! I don't have to take everything as it is. Some things I can also change! And I am curious how God guides me and what I can learn in the near future!
Because of the cross I have been crucified in relation to the world, set free from the stifling atmosphere of pleasing others and fitting into the little patterns that they dictate.
It is not what you and I do. It is what God is doing, and he is creating something totally new,
a free life!
Galatians 6:15