Get Organized – Part 2

If I made one more turkey and mayo sandwich I felt like I was going to have a come-a-part! If I gathered up the deserted legos one more night, I felt like someone was going to have to gather up my shattered emotions. If I cleaned the spilled juice, the dirt left on the front porch steps from muddy boots, and picked up the scattered books that always peppered every inch of our family room floor….I felt like I was going to need help. Serious help!  Because … I was spent! So plum tired from the routines of my life that didn’t seem, at the time, to have a smidgin’ of meaning or purpose to them.

It’s just where I was as a mom.

I felt stuck.

I felt bored.

I felt unsure. And I felt chronic stress and depression over one very real reality in my life –

I was living without passion.

I was living without the passion that comes when a woman makes a decision, just one decision, and that decision is …

to live her life!

And to live her life to the fullest! To own it. To say, “This is my life, and it’s been custom-made for me. Therefore, it’s time. Time to take this life God has given me and give it right back to Him in FULL.”

You see, I wasn’t finding joy in those things that once made me elated about motherhood. Even a wind chime that once played what I consider to be beautiful music, became only noise. Seeing the brilliant morning sunrise as being a warming and wonderful “Welcome” into a new day, became only a constant burning reminder that I HAD to get up and get going into the same lifeless routine.

Does this sound like depression? It was. I was depressed due to being oppressed.

It’s just where I was.

But I had no idea what it was. What was so “off” in my life that made everything about my day look like a dreary and cloudy low fog morning?

It was while sitting in church, (this is why I feel so strongly about not forsaking going to church…it’s an absolute for Rip and I), I heard a message on being organized when a turning point happened in my spirit. I knew right then and there that the something that HAD to change was me. My perspective, and my routine. “I” had to change. No one was going to change me for me. That was up to me. What I had been doing wasn’t working. And I knew in that moment, in that very sacred second while listening with eager ears, that it was time for me to say, “Ok, Lord, I give. I’m waving the white flag and want to apply what I;m hearing You say to me through this pastor. I am desperately ready to praise You for my life daily and plan with You the purposes of the areas of my life.”

It was surrendering and a stepping out … all at the same time.

So, as I sat there I thought, “This is my life. No one is to live it for me. As a grown adult woman, God expects me to live my life abundantly with order to my days. Because He is an orderly God.” I had never fully understood the disciplines of the Proverbs 31 woman until that moment. She didn’t live like I had always thought she had lived — just crazily busy and with massively full days — no, she lived organized, orderly and fully ALIVE from day to day.  She was about her life with immeasurable grace that could be seen methodically, with precision and a definite routine and organization to her personal life, her family life, her community life … her life that was abundant! And she was praised for it. Rewarded for it.

So, as I left church and immediately sat down to make an “Ownership Plan” (a plan that made me take ownership of my life in Christ), all depression was soon replaced with delight. Panic was replaced with peace. Anxiety was replaced with living Alive! And haphazardness was replaced with Heavenly plans and passions that literally became a part of the productivity to my days.

So, in this one video I share how one decision to make a plan, in just one decision to grab hold of THE life God has for me by getting an organized morning routine, absolutely changed everything in my life as a mother to young children.

Get Organized Series – Part 2 from lisa rippy on Vimeo.