first

so im sitting on the couch, eating strawberries and cream oatmeal (which is heavenly), typing away at the nothingness that exists in this first post, with jon mclaughlin singing beautiful music in the background. I'm not quite sure why I even started this thing - after all, no one's going to read it (well not after the initial post that I'll probably proclaim on facebook). I'm just doing it because Sydni did and it looked interesting.

and so im still sitting here...on a friday night...bored. my roommate went to bed hours ago and I've spent my night sifting through the piles of laundry sitting on my bedroom floor screaming at me to be washed, folded, and put away. I am not usually the kind of girl with clothes all over her room, but a few months ago something happened and I just stopped folding laundry. I think the combination of teaching school, online classes, and lack of sleep caused the unfortunate event to occur. if only you'd had the opportunity to open my closet door yesterday - you would have been in for a big surprise and possibly an injury as laundry spilled over the top of the basket, onto the floor, and out the door. Not only that, it was a mixture of clean and dirty as I scrambled to get the house clean before a friend stopped by the other night. I had 15 minutes to get my bed made, the clothes basket out of view, and the living room looking like we don't sleep there (pillows and blankets filled the couches). In my moments of chaos, I just threw all the clothes in the closet - not once considering (until I'd already done it) that not all those were of the same nature. In fact, I didn't even remember that I'd put everything in there until the next morning when I opened the door to get something out and everything came spewing out at me.

And as I struggled through the laundry (no, I did not attempt to filter through it and clean it at that moment) to get a simple pair of flip flops so I could trek around town, a thought occured to me... "how in the world did I allow this to get this crazy? and who in their right mind would do laundry just to let it sit in a basket for a week?"



So many times I let that happen to things in my life. I let a load of laundry (or a broken friendship, sometimes dishes in the sink, homework assignments, unsaid words that need to be spoken, voicemails, the number of days spent not reading my bible, etc) pile up and pile up until something breaks; until my heart is so overloaded with emotions or dishes are piling over onto the counter...whatever it may be... that I just break. Whether that be breaking down, breaking into a cleaning fiasco, breaking into a fierce study mode, allowing myself to push delete on all the voicemails - sometimes without listening to the entire message, etc..i simply break.

The reason I do this is simple: they are all things I can control. So much of my life is planned out for me (especially during the school year) that when I find things in my life that I can control - like whether or not I do the dishes or fold my laundry - or whether i talk through a broken friendship or spend time in the Word -- I tend to let those things be the first to go...and usually go for a while.

And then the day comes where I redo all the laundry, unload and reload the dishwasher, read my bible, check and return all the email/text messages and listen to the voicemails -only to find that there were 5(from several different days) from my dearest friend Kelby leaving me incredible words of encouragement :) - that I realized that letting things pile up is ok ...because when I get in that moment of cleaning it all up and putting it all back to order - I find that the moments alone, the times spent washing, listening to encouragement...the times of just reorganizing my life... are the times I feel really really blessed.

(...so this has been written over several hours, between doing laundry and completing a homework assignment I forgot I had, and talking to a new friend ...and so now, when i try to wrap it up - when I try to remember what I intended to say in the first place... I simply cant. So i'm going to end this, without reading over it and hope it all makes sense...and hope that somewhere in it, you can see my heart, hear my voice, and ...yeah)