Simplify, Simplify

 For a long time now, I've felt the need to simplify my life. I've decluttered and decluttered, and never seem to make any progress. My foray into Carmelite spirituality only seems to intensify my burning desire for more simplicity. Less clutter. Less stuff. I sincerely feel like I hear God whispering to my heart, "Simplify, simplify."

I desire more time and mental space to focus on God. To focus on prayer and spiritual reading. I've struggled to find it. I'm not a monastic. I'm a wife and mother, and that life can be complicated. Sharing my home and life with so many others means I'm not as free as I would like to exact The Purge. 😂  So many of these things that surround me, and take up so much of my space and time, and occupy my thoughts, aren't even mine. 

And then, as I seek to purge and simplify, there's the problem of the seemingly endless wish list on Amazon, of things I desire as I build my new life, my new self. There's the problem of being poor a lot of the time, and worrying that I will need a thing I have gotten rid of, and be unable to easily replace it. Perhaps this is a sign of lack of trust in God to provide for my needs. My grandmother (a child of the Great Depression) would have called it wisdom. Waste not, want not. She would be horrified at all the things I threw away yesterday. Scrap blue jeans, fabric bits, yarn, half-finished projects that were abandoned years ago. I am who I am, I suppose, and it was time to admit to myself that no matter how much I spent on yarn for that baby blanket (for my niece that turned out to be a nephew at the 11th hour), I was never going to actually finish making it. I intended to finish it for my daughter, when we learned we were having a girl. That never happened either. Most of the time, I don't have time for craft projects, no matter how much I might enjoy them, and I need the space. I need my space to be clearer and not so cluttered up by the dreams of the past.

And if it was time to admit I was never going to finish that baby blanket, it was past time to admit I was never going to finish the sweater my mother started for me when I was a teen. 😳 In all honesty, I probably lack the ability to finish anything she started. Her stitch tension is far tighter than mine, so it would just end up looking goofy anyway. It hurt. I can admit that here. It hurt to pull the needle out of her work and throw it away. But if I can't even finish my own abandoned projects, there's no way I'm going to finish someone else's. It's just stuff, after all. Now, on the other side, with all the wisdom that affords them, I think my mother and grandmother (borderline hoarders, though they were) would understand that. I can't let stuff, no matter how sentimental, be what stands in the way of my spiritual growth.

Simplify, simplify.

I first encountered this little quote (I think it was attributed to Thoreau) in a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Much like Calvin's parents, I can't do the most obvious thing. 😂

I cannot, no matter how much my husband jokingly suggests it, get rid of all the children. Or him, either, for that matter. *sips coffee*  I love them, after all. And despite my monastic heart, they are my vocation. I just feel an increasing desire to learn to balance the two.

May Jesus and His Blessed Mother, my holy angel, St. Monica, and all the Carmelite saints intercede for me, direct my paths, and teach me how to order my days.

Simplify, simplify.