Not-Very-Simple Starting Places

We all have moments where we look at our lives and wonder what went wrong. How did I end up here? How am I this kind of person, instead of the one I wanted to be? For me one of those moments came in January, when I looked at myself and saw a stressed out, over-worked, worried woman who was still behind on "everything" and didn't have the time, energy, or brain space to be a fun mom. A nice mom. A happy mom. Yes, we had our moments of fun, but for the most part, even in the rare moment when I stopped to really play with my kids, I still had this gnawing fear in the pit of my stomach that this little bit of play was only putting me more behind.

In order to get from point A (gnawing fear, stress, unsatisfied, guilty, and behind on everything) to point B (happy mom, present and focused, with a reasonable amount of order and reasonable expectations) I had to shovel myself out of the pressure-laden workload I'd piled on top of myself. No one was going to do this but me. (Hard lesson.) But, as I've seen become more and more apparent over the course of the year, I also don't have to do anything alone. Because I've got a Heavenly Father who puts my feet down on the path he wants me to walk--I just have to trust and go forward.

The first things I looked at were the energy-suckers. Things that devoured my time and effort with little or no reward. These things had to be streamlined, cleared away, automated, and prioritized in order for me to make time to do things that make me happy. Because as much as I'd love to abandon doing the dishes or paying the bills in favor of scratching graphite over sketchbook pages, in the long run, the success and consistency of those necessary things are what give me the mental freedom to delve into peace, study, creativity, and exploration. So, first things first, I knew I had to tackle at least these four massive energy-sucking issues and make them more manageable:

1. My relationship with my children (I was, I am horribly ashamed to admit, yelling a lot),

2. My children's relationships with each other (I didn't know these first two were separate issues at the time),

3. Money (the monster worry that ate my life, pinched my generosity, piled on layer after layer of fear, wasted my time, sucked up my hours, ruined my sleep, and still never felt manageable),

and

4. Housekeeping (the thing I have felt so bad at for my whole life that I literally talked it through with a therapist in a full-on therapy session in my early twenties, and clearly resolved nothing).

I felt intuitively (or, more likely, I was inspired by the Spirit to know) that cleaning up these four (massive!) things would create a firm, dependable foundation of necessary good that would allow me more mental space to devote to the above-and-beyond good I craved: time to read, more moments of creativity, peace in our home, more comfort with/acceptance of who I am, the capability to really engage with my children and with Steve, and enough quiet, unhurried moments to be more focused on the influence of my Savior and the many beautiful plans my Father in Heaven might have for me. 

There were a lot of things missing, huh? I didn't even list all of them.

I am still a work in progress, but I am pleased with the places I've started. 2014 was a banner year for me, and I am so thankful for the work I put in at the beginning now that I can finally look back and see how my path has shifted toward less worry and more beauty. I'm going to try to write myself through this, because it's been kind of a lot to process. So bear with me as I write overly long posts about simplicity--they are mostly for myself, and even though I've thrown a lot of stuff out the (metaphorical) window in the name of streamlining, I've never really been able to be sparing when it comes to words. :)