When Being Brave Isn't Fun

The excitement is wearing off and what's left is a whole lot of crap. 

This sums up how life looks and feels right now...messy. 

Where did all of this stuff come from? These bins and boxes that fill our closets, cabinets and crawl space. I don't even know what some of it is. It feels like we've been sorting, purging, decluttering for months and yet there is still more to do. It isn't fun anymore. The initial enthusiasm of selling the house is gone and what's left is a daze of frustration, exhaustion and even a little bit of apathy. 

The vision of why we are doing this has gotten lost somewhere between sleepless nights and hectic days. If only life (work, nap schedules, bills, diaper changes, commitments, meal prep, appointments, laundry) could stop for a week...then maybe I could finish the task at hand. 

I had the opportunity to hear Andy Stanley speak recently and he asked this simple yet profound question: What breaks your heart? What is it that breaks your heart to the point that you cannot live with yourself if you don't figure out how to fix it? 

It breaks my heart to think about all the moms out there who want to stay home with their babies and can't afford to. It breaks my heart to think about our culture that engrains a "more is more" mentality into us at such an early age that we end up working our entire lives to have things we don't actually want or need. It breaks my heart to hear someone share a dream and end with, "but I could never afford to pursue it." 

Life is not going to stop to allow us to pursue the things that break our hearts. We will have to figure out a way to change them while still feeding our families, tending to our responsibilities and honoring our commitments. Being brave is not always fun and it is certainly not convenient. In the midst of the really hard parts of pursuing a dream, I find hope knowing that nothing worth doing will ever be easy. You will fight for it, shed tears for it and lose sleep over it. It will break you and shape you, but don't lose heart. What you're doing is worth it. 

I don't know that anything could have prepared me for the amount of work it would be to empty out a 2,500 square foot home. Everyday I am re-evaluating what I had originally deemed as a necessity, realizing there are so few things that are really needed.

Remember my closet from the big house? I've narrowed it down to three sets of clothes: maternity, post baby, and "Yay, you've lost the weight!" The maternity clothes are accessible now and have been paired down to less than 50 items (not including shoes, pj's or sweatpants). The other two sets of clothes are in storage and will be cut drastically when they're able to be tried on. Zac has gone through a similar process of eliminating clothing, summer clothes are out now with winter clothes in storage to be re-evaluated with the new season. The work of creating a tiny wardrobe doesn't feel like GREAT work. It feels redundant (seriously, haven't I sorted this stuff six times already??) and restricting. 

In reality, we will have to do this all over again when we move into the tiny house. Fifty items will likely become 30 or 40, but it's a process. It is part of a great work that will reshape our priorities, lifestyle and outlook. Whether your work is laundry, long hours, coordinating schedules or all of the above...press on my friends, press on. We are all working to change the things that break our hearts. It isn't easy and sometimes it isn't fun, but don't lose sight. 

"I’m doing a great work; I can’t come down."
Nehemiah 6:3