You may have read my review of Let. It. Go.
by Karen Ehman that I posted last week here. Melissa Taylor is leading an online Bible study with this book that over 8,000 people are doing! Wow! Well guess what....I am one of them! That means you get to hear all about what I am learning/doing during the study every week for the next several weeks. Ready for the first one?In the book Karen makes a comparison between Ma Ingalls of Little House on the Prairie fame and Jane Jetson (you know....the gal with a dog named Astro!). I loved it! I have often wished I lived back in Ma Ingalls days. Life was so much simpler and easier....ahhhh....those were the days...
Then my hubby and I were talking about it and now I am not so sure. Ma Ingalls may not have had to chose between 30 different kinds/brands of peanut butter when she went to the store, but all the girls in the house wore dresses from the same bolt of fabric cuz there wasn't a lot to choose from. She may not have been competing with the gals on the cover of Vogue for her husband's eye, but she sure was busy handwashing all the clothes and the dishes and scrubbing the floors by hand. (Probably made for some not so soft hands!) Ma Ingalls life may have had fewer areas to control, but I think I am content with my vacuum cleaner, dishwasher, and dress styles.
And don't think she didn't have issues with control too. After all she was the one who decided which bolt of fabric came into the house, whether the meat Pa brought home got roasted, stewed or fried, and I can just see her telling Pa all about the dining room table needing to be sanded down because Sally who was visiting commented on how hers was smooth (we women sure are catty aren't we?). As Karen said in chapter 1, we women seem to be wired to control. That is true whether you lived next door to Ma Ingalls or Jane Jetson and it is true where you are living now.
I don't think I need to teleport back to the old days, I just need to focus on deliberate simplification, choosing what is important and letting go of the rest. One of the things I had to let go of was some of the organizations that I worked with. I have always liked trying new things, and the opportunities that had been extended to me to review homeschool materials, foods, and lots more were becoming overwhelming. So I prayed and let go of the ones that were becoming to distracting, to much work and not enough reward, that were causing me to stress over deadlines. So I let them go....deliberate simplification.
Recently I also had to weed through my reading choices. I am a BIG reader (which is why I have created Sunflowers at Home's Book Review 4 U 2) and my reading had been very eclectic. A while back though I felt God telling me that that was an area I needed to examine in relation to my walk with Him. As Karen said on pg. 42, "Our mission is...obey God. Love and serve others. And do it with a smile so that the watching world will want to know more about the God we faithfully serve as we glorify him with our choices". Some of my reading/entertainment choices weren't glorifying Him, they weren't helping me to grow closer to Him, they were pulling me back into a worldly life. Not don't get me wrong. I am not condemning secular reading. There are some really great authors out there that don't write in the Christian genre. I just know that for me, reading them wasn't a good thing, so I let them go.
Another choice that I made was to only listen to Christian music. Again I found that secular music was drawing me back to the life I lived before I met Jesus and I didn't want that. The good news is that Christian music isn't just gospel (not that there is anything wrong with gospel, but for this gal who grew up listening to hair bands of the 80's it just wasn't getting it!) anymore. I find myself listening to Christian rock, my son listens to Christian hard rock/metal bands as well as Christian rap. My daughters fall in between. We have found that it helps us to keep our hearts on Jesus, helps us to hide His word in our hearts and generally keeps us smiling.
Now, I still have a lot of winnowing to do and a lot of letting go to do. So far we are just talking about controlling things. I am pretty comfortable letting go of that for the most part....before long we are getting into running (controlling) the home....uh ohhhh!
Until next time,
It's not to late to join over 8,000 women who are studying Let. It. Go.: How to Stop Running the Show and Start Walking in Faith
online with Melissa Taylor. It is free to join and all you need is the book. Zondervan is even offering portions of the DVD study to the participants free of charge! Click here for more information and to sign up.