Simplicity and Peace

Have any of you made goals or given up stuff for Lent? I've mentioned before about giving up Pinterest but the overarching goal was to simplify my life. To have a feeling a peace pervade these forty days. I think it's so easy to let something like Pinterest make me feel like I have to do more, be more and show off some crazy do-it-yourself abilities. I did just go into Pinterest quickly to make a screen capture of this page but don't you sometimes feel like you're just not enough when looking at these amazing images... I want to NOT believe that and refocus. Will I use Pinterest again? Heck yes. It's an amazing tool. I'll just spend less time dilly-dallying on the site.

Probably more than any other Lent I’ve never felt such a LACK of peace and simplicity despite trying to aim for that. I feel like we are going at a 100 miles an hour. We have been going from home to Mass General to visit Meredith to one of our rentals to home to try to make a decent healthy dinner to meetings (not all in the same day, thank goodness!)… it’s been hard to say the least. I keep telling AJ, when he asks me “what is wrong with us?” that we will look back at this time when we are sitting on a beach on Mykonos and laugh at how insane we felt. (Mykonos, Greece is my dream place to spend a season of our lives once we are a little older. And yes, that is what the photo is below... even the alley ways were fabulous and white washed.)

But you know what; I don’t want to have to wait until Mykonos to feel peace. I want to feel peace IN this craziness. I want simplicity in this out of control stage. Is that too much to ask for? I don’t think so. When I have this feeling where life just seems to be spinning and I can’t keep up I purge. It seems to be the one thing I can control.  I have two bags of clothes that I’m too insecure about (sweater that makes me look like I’m in Anne of Green Gables with puffed sleeves? Gone.). It’s felt good to purge. I don’t want “stuff” to control me. I gave away three chairs and a hutch on Craigslist the other day. I didn’t even charge for them because I just wanted things out. These photos below are from my ads on Craigslist. :)

The second thing that I feel like God has taught me is about taking it one day at a time. Things with Meredith (AJ's sis) could change in an instant. The other day we were told her surgery to implant an devices to work an external heart went really well. The next day we get the call that she is bleeding and needs another surgery to correct that. It’s normal for that to happen but “normal” doesn’t seem to matter much when NONE of this is normal to us. Maybe normal for the doctors who see this all the time. And I guess I shouldn’t even say he’s teaching me to take it one day at a time, it’s more like one moment at a time. On Saturday AJ and I went to visit Meredith in the hospital and the instant I saw her I started to tear up. She was lying in the bed, sedated, with a feeding and breathing tube hooked up to her. I felt like God just said to me “Jen, this crying isn’t what Meredith needs now. Get in there and talk to her.” And so we went in there and talked to her about stuff that doesn't seem to matter in light of her laying in a hospital bed... the movie we watched the night before, how Drew poked one of the chickens in the eye, how I made a soup similar to one she makes and all these other hum drum things.

The third thing that I’ve done three times this week, and I’m pretty much terrible at this, is stick up for what I want / need. I’ve said “No”. “Yes, but wait for a little bit” and I’ve delegated. It feels good to verbalize what I need. A feeling of definite peace has resulted (when I’m not feeling too guilty about not people pleasing :)).

Tell me, what are you doing to simplify? Has a feeling of peace been evasive lately?