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Monday, January 06, 2014

Updates after 2 weeks and now 2 months in the USA

We've been back in the US for 2 weeks now:
 Living in this house seems luxurious and easy. I enjoy washing my clothes with a washing machine. I even use the dryer and the dishwasher. We have carpeting which I normally hate but right now in my life it is a very happy frivolity. Lazuli could not crawl on the floor in the cabin. It was unfinished so it was always dirty, cold and sometimes muddy. Now we all lay around and play and do push-ups on the floor with her. At the cabin we could only wear black, dark brown and navy because of the sticky nature of the dirt and the abundance of it. You could not get the dirt out of the fabric. Even white clothes sitting on a shelf would be destroyed with the dirt in the air before we had a chance to wear them.

Now back for 2 months:
The simplicity of the laundry job has vanished as we acquire more and more clothes. The few dirty socks needing to be washed that were sitting quaintly beside the washer has been replaced by a large dirty laundry mound that sometimes smells and is rarely completed.

Some areas that were sweet and fresh because of their emptiness (for example, the garage, and some of the kitchen cupboards) are now making me feel confused and cluttered in mind.
I admit that I need sparsity and simplicity more than most people for my peace of mind but so did George Muller so I'm in good company.
I don't think that I'll wait until it's time to move to make my home the way I want it to be, the way it felt when we first moved in. The more children that the Lord blesses us with the less things we want around. We prefer people to nick-knacks. Not that nick-knacks are bad, if they make you smile or be better at what's important to you.
We parents all want to create the environment that our families can flourish in. The things we surround ourselves with should foster the things that we want to see in ourselves and our children like; sweetness, inspiration, and love.

I miss the fire that was always burning in the cabin, providing warmth, food, light and good camping smells. That was a messy thing to have around that was worth any number of plastic toys or iphones. It went into the mind, nose, skin, eyes and created a cozy space of love that all my relationships will flow from.

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