It’s no news to those close to me that I am turning a new leaf in the cleaning department. A few weeks ago, I printed off a sheet that divided our house into 40 areas and I’ve been cleaning each area out, one area per day. I’m also applying the KonMari method as I clean things out and asking, “Does this bring me joy?” as I clean. I am amazed at things I have held on to that do not bring me joy. It’s a liberating method and I’m loving it. I’ve applied it to my shopping and I don’t think I’ve bought a single thing in the past 3 weeks besides food.

Last night, as I sat in a heap of papers that contained bills from Cingular and receipts from Blockbuster video rentals (if that gives any indication of how long I have held on to these papers) I was looking around at the mess I had made. The heap came from a small magazine rack and a paper bag I had brought up from the garage last summer, almost a year ago, to go through before I just tossed it all.

Staring at the pile of paper and dust around me, I was amazed at how much of a mess I had made from that little bag and a magazine rack. It looked like a lot more than what I had started with and I ended up with an entire garbage bag full. I don’t know how. I don’t know where it all came from. Once it was all bagged up and I had separated out the papers I needed to keep, which were very few, I looked at the area where it had been. I looked at the oven that I had scrubbed out first after letting a baking soda paste sit in it overnight. Everything was sparkling. It gave me peace and it made me smile.

It took me a little over three hours. I spent that three hours talking with God. During our talk, He showed me a few things. I started with a somewhat clean area. The papers were in a bag and a rack, put up. The stove was closed so you couldn’t see the gunk and the paste on the inside. To the average onlooker, all was well. In order to get the grease and gunk out of the oven, I had to make a mess by spreading the paste all over it. When I went to scrub it down, it got even messier. The paste mixed with the grease and created a brown gritty sludge. It took some work to wipe it all out and make sure I got every bit of baking soda out. Then I turned the broiler on to burn off the pieces I missed. Next, when I started on the paper, as I already mentioned, it went from being contained into two small areas to looking like a paper canon exploded in the room.

When life seems to be a mess and things are all over the place, we sometimes think everything hit at once, like it came out of nowhere, and it all seems so much bigger and overwhelming than it did before. If we really think about it though, those “messy” things, were there all along, hidden away, out of sight. They must be pulled out, sifted through, scrubbed down, wiped out, torn up, thrown out and tidied up to look sparkly.

God will take us through our mess. He will carry us, drag us or walk beside us. It’s up to us. He gets things messy so He can clean us up. He has to dig out the grime, scrape off the grease and tear up the old and unnecessary papers we no longer need. When things appear to be getting worse in life, pray on through and hold tight to your faith. Know that He is God and always will be. He is refining you for greater things. Great days are ahead when they look the dimmest. You will come out on the other side with joy and peace. He will never leave you or forsake you. Choose to walk with Him. Choose to let go of the old, embrace the new and carry on.

Psalm 66:10 (KJV)

For thou, O God, hast proved us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried.

When we moved out of Detroit and to “the country” as it is referred to in Michigan, we raised our own food. Pigs, chickens, rabbits, turkeys, and a bull. The bull’s name was Buddy. Buddy the Bull. I remember helping my dad and brother dig fence post holes in preparation for the delivery of Buddy the Bull. It was a lot of work in the rich Michigan dirt. Then we had to run the electric fence and make sure everything was secure and hooked up properly and in working order. This took place over a time period that seemed like years but was more than likely a few Saturdays worth of work.

Buddy arrived and we had everything set for him. He was young and not fully grown obviously but lots of food and water and that changed. He grew that season into a beautiful adult bull. Smooth black hair covered his body and he produced sounds that made me think “that’s what Big Foot would sound like”.

Every day after school we (my brothers and me) were responsible for feeding and watering the animals. As much as I loathed this chore I enjoyed it just as much because I loved animals. It was a double edged sword however because I spent a lot of time with the animals knowing they would eventually become my food. I believe the geese knew this all along and made it apparent they had no intention of being friendly while we fattened them up. We had a turkey that liked to attack every time you had your back turned to him too. It made for interesting explanations of scabs and scars at school.

Buddy the Bull and I never really became friends. He was massive and I knew he could stomp me into the ground without much effort. There was however a mutual respect as long as he was on one side of the electric fence and I on the other. Every now and then I could pat his head and he seemed content with that. He knew why he was there. I knew why he was there. We didn’t talk about it.

You would think the strongest electric fence available could keep Buddy within the confines of his pen. It wasn’t a small pen either. He had his own field all to himself. He had room to run and play and eat until his four bellies were full.

Our house sat on the corner of a main road and side road. One day, coming home from school on the bus, I happened to look up ahead and saw a black mass at the cross road and a person dressed in gray, swinging a bucket in front of the mass. It was my mom. Buddy the Bull had somehow escaped his pen and my mom was in front of him, in the middle of the road, trying to coax him back to the barn a couple football fields away with a bucket of oats and thick stick for protection. It was the one time I was glad we were the second to last bus stop. Word still got around though, it was a small town.

I got off the bus and my mom yelled at me and my brother to get in the house. I’m sure she was thinking the same thing I was – there was no electric fence to stop this massive creature from trampling over us. We went in and watched through the window for the next 20 minutes while she led him back to the barn and secured him in the inside pen until my dad came home.

We walked the fence line and found where he had broken through. That bull took a running charge on the side of the barn, parallel to the side road, right through the electric fence. We knew by the marks he left on the side of freedom. You could see where his hooves had skidded into the dirt. A small trench about two feet long and holes at the end where he had dug his heels in. Evidently the shock from fence shook him bad enough to stun him a moment before he meandered down the road.

I could only imagine my mom’s reaction earlier that day when she glanced out the window and saw Buddy the Bull hanging out in the road. There was our winter’s worth of meat just trotting down the road and she had to rescue it. I should have noted earlier my mom is about 5’-4” and petite. It was a sight to see.

This wasn’t the last time Buddy the Bull escaped. He kept trying but he always ended up back in the pen thanks to a little woman, a bucket of oats and big stick.

I’ve been tickled by this story all morning, playing it over in my head. I asked God why He reminded me of it. Here was His answer. There are times in life where we have to get out of our comfort zone. Out of the area where we know where to take shelter, where to find our food and where we can find someone to pat us on the head. The electric fence may be there for our protection but to bust through it is going to sting a little, if only for a while. We have to dig our heels in, regroup, and only then can we trot down the road to freedom.

Buddy turned back. It was his choice. He was powerful enough to take off down the road and there was nothing any of us could have done about it. We can turn around and play it safe or we can trust God and keep heading for the horizon.  I choose to trust God.

Proverbs 3:5 (KJV)

Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.

This evening I came home and attacked my oven. I attacked it with baking soda and vinegar. Then I attacked the microwave with the same concoction. My husband wouldn’t be shy to tell you that I loathe cleaning of any kind but I do it anyways. I would rather be writing, reading or creating rather than cleaning. It has been a life-long battle against my attitude when I clean. The only way I can clean and keep a good attitude is if everyone is out of the house, radio on and I can focus on my conversation with God.

I use my cleaning time to pray and talk to God and thank Him for everything and tell Him my burdens and seek His face. I have found this helps me not focus on the fact that I’m having to spend precious time cleaning because it makes great use of my time when I spend it with Him.

As I was cleaning tonight and the overwhelming smell of vinegar was swirling around my head, I thought of Jesus on the Cross. Not because I felt like I was being tortured but because of the smell of vinegar.

Matthew 27:34 (KJV) They gave him vinegar to drink mingled with gall: and when he had tasted thereof, he would not drink.

As a young child in church and hearing this verse my first thought was, “Yuck. Vinegar? Why would they be so mean to him?”

It wasn’t until I was older that I had studied and researched to find differing explanations as to what and why this was offered to him. I’m not going into detail on that subject matter but it is an interesting topic to study up on.

We use vinegar as an all-natural cleaner to disinfect and get rid of grime without harsh chemicals. At least that is what I am hoping happens to my oven. Tomorrow my answer will reveal itself.

What did Jesus accomplish on the cross?  A whole lot. In my prayer time tonight, as I inhaled the smell of vinegar, I thought about the sacrifice He made for me. The grace He provides for me every day. The mercy He has shown me over the years. The grace and mercy I needed today alone and how He willingly gives it. How he represents vinegar in our lives. He is not harsh but fair. His blood makes us white as snow. My sins that saturate and disgrace, He took on the cross. Over two thousand years ago, He knew I would need Him now. So he chose to be beaten. He chose to be tortured. He chose to be spit on. He chose to be called names. He chose to die. I needed Him. I need Him.

Tonight I am overwhelmed with His love. I am just as amazed as I was the first time I accepted Jesus into my heart and felt the love of God. There is nothing greater. There is nothing grander. There is nothing that compares to it. Not even a clean oven.

Isaiah 1:18 (KJV)

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

Have you ever noticed before a huge blessing in your life things seem to fall apart? Sometimes we don’t know a blessing or an answered prayer is about to take place but it can be easy to see all the things falling apart. When something big, something great, is coming-that’s when the refrigerator quits, the car messes up, the basement floods, a layoff happens, the dryer no longer dries or any other myriad of annoyances take place.

I’ve been talking to God about this a lot lately because I know the word He dropped in my heart for me and my husband for 2017: this is our year of jubilee.

This is the year we get back everything the devil destroyed and stole from us. Seven years ago my dad passed which had an avalanche effect on our lives in all aspects. That story is for a different day but it has been seven years of recovering from it.

A year of jubilee is exciting. Restoration is a great thing. Since the first of the year, it feels like it has been an uphill battle. So I asked God a question in my prayer time, “God, why are we stuck?”

That is the feeling both me and my husband have had, stuck. We know we are moving on to greater things so why haven’t we yet? What’s the hold up? When I asked God this question, he answered. There were two things that were keeping us right where we were at in life. Here was His response.

“You cannot leave unfinished business. There are two vehicles sitting on a family member’s property that need to be taken care of and you have to take care of it.  The other thing I instructed you to do was to minimize your belongings. You’ve started but you haven’t cleaned everything out like I said to.”

I immediately repented. I had talked about the two cars. I kept saying something needed to be done about it but never actually did anything about it. As for cleaning things out of the house, I had done a little here and there over the past year but not top to bottom and corner to corner like I knew I was supposed to.

After I repented, thanked God for His mercy and grace, I started a plan of action. I had another family member who would be able to take care of one of the cars that needed to be junked so we made arrangements to meet him. In that meeting, the junk car got picked up and we sold the other. Where I thought taking care of one car would be all we accomplished that day, God stepped in and made it all simple and took care of the entire thing. When I make the effort, God swoops in and makes life easy.

Next task is minimizing our belongings. I found a nifty 40 day cleaning template that allowed me to divide our house up into 40 areas so the task wouldn’t be so overwhelming. Where this is something that I should have been doing for the past year, the template came in handy to keep me from feeling so overwhelmed with it. It’s working. This will be complete before March 1^st gets here. I’m not sure of the importance of this but I know it is.

So, with this question being answered and me working on it, everything seemed like it started falling apart in every other area of our lives. I asked God about this. He reminded me of people in the Bible like Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Mary (Jesus’ mother), even Jesus,  and the trials they all went through before dreams were fulfilled and blessings poured out.

Everything in their lives seemed to be going down a path furthest away from their blessing or promise. Things they were required to do and accomplish were not always easy and sometimes didn’t make sense. Noah built an ark for a flood beyond anyone’s imagination. Abraham faced many challenges and is one of the greatest known people of the Bible. Moses took a bunch of whiny people and wandered around a desert for 40 years among other things. David, wow. Just read his story. Mary faced the possibility of stoning and having her life turned completely upside down when she accepted her calling. Jesus, well, if you don’t know the story yet, take a look at the New Testament.

And here I am trying to figure out how not to be overwhelmed by cleaning a house.

We are able to make our way through this life with all of its annoyances because we know on the other side of the mountain, we get blessed. If we know Jesus, we know there is a promise and we work towards that promise every minute of every day.

I know this year is our year of jubilee. It may not look like it at the moment but I have faith and I know God’s promises. His plans and thoughts are of peace and not disaster to give me a hope and a future (Jeremiah 29:11). He has to have my cooperation through it all though. He’s a good Father.

Mark 11:23 KJV

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.

It’s that kind of morning where everything I touch falls to the floor, where the coffee ground holder isn’t seated just right so the pot overflows and the grounds are everywhere with hot coffee dripping on my toes, where the only necklace that goes with my outfit is tangled with every single other necklace I own and a used lint roll paper is stuck to my boot as I try to make my way out the door.

Not a good start to a day that’s within a week that has already been difficult to maneuver. Unexpected news. Uncertainty’s looming. So many options that I don’t even know where to start. Or do I?

I start with God. How ridiculous is it that I almost let coffee grounds, sticky paper and a necklace get the better of me? I watched my attitude begin to go downhill fast like a well-made wooden race car with the lead weight precisely placed.

I am not a morning person to begin with and any little hiccup in the morning has the potential to set my day in motion down a dark and dreary path. I have to choose daily to adjust my attitude and focus on God first but sometimes I trip, stumble and fall over the enemy’s silly obstacles. This morning I flopped around like a dying fish in some coffee grounds and wanted to stomp my foot like a two year old.

But God. His still small voice telling me I’m better. I am more. I am victorious. I am able. I am all things in Christ because Christ is in me. How can I fail knowing that? I’m not failing. I’m making my way through life with God on my side.

My husband is a morning person and his mood is just as solid at 5 am as it is at 5 pm, unchanging. I don’t know how he does it. The grace and mercy he shows me while I adjust to waking up in the mornings is abundant. He’s such a great husband.

God is there in my hiccups. He’s there in my victories. If I seek Him first or I seek Him halfway through my fall, He’s there. If a situation is looking dreadful we are instructed to seek God first. Don’t worry about what “could”. If there is something of concern in our lives then it is of concern to God. He wants us joyful with our mind on Him at all times. That means even the situations that we may feel overwhelmed with…hand them over.  Hand them over. Let me say it one more time – hand them over!

He will make a way. His logic is not like our logic. Simple math tells us that giving 10% of our income leaves us with 90%. I dare you to try it if you never have and see how God’s logic works. It’s the complete opposite. He doesn’t just do that with our finances either. You may look at your situation and see a single outcome and you may not like that outcome. With God, ALL things are possible. That means you don’t have just a single outcome, you have ALL outcomes and when we willingly hand it over to God, we can trust and rest in peace that the outcome will be perfect and in our best interest.

Matthew 6:33-34 KJV

33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.