Cleaning out the Nest

My boys don't like to listen. It is almost a gift, a talent, in toning me out. They climb all over furniture, wrestle, fight, and other wise act like little boys. Every time words leave my mouth, it is ignored. It takes time after time after time, before one or two things happen. Either they listen and finally stop, or they get hurt, like I knew they would.

Then today, I realized I'm just like my boys. 

I don't listen, I don't listen well at all. 

I always learn lessons the hard way, it takes pain, stress and heartache.

Kind of like now. 

Over the past month, or year, I have felt like I needed to stop. Stop being to busy, stop saying yes, stop striving. Take some things off my plate and give my self room. After I had Guy I crashed, crashed hard. Between postpartum, being put on the wrong medication and my bi-polar hitting all new level of scary, I need to pull back and get healthy. But, I couldn't. I kept pushing. 

Pushing out of fear.

What if I stop writing, would anyone listen again? 

What if I stop shut down my shop, what would happen to our finances? 

Where would we get the money for bills, for diapers? 

Why can't I just "buck up" and push through? 

Other women, moms can have thriving business why cant I?  

 

 

This morning it hit me. Not like my yelling at the boys, more like washed over me. Like those moments that I sit down on their level, grab their little faces in my hands, telling them to stop.

  They love the Lord’s teachings,
    and they think about those teachings day and night. 

They are strong, like a tree planted by a river.
    The tree produces fruit in season,
    and its leaves don’t die.
Everything they do will succeed. Psalm 1:2-3

God grabbed my face this morning. Pulling me up on the couch beside him and whispered, Stop.

Stop, because it's not my season. It doesn't say the tree produces fruit constantly, it says in season. This is my season of nesting, of healing. Those are my fruits for this season. Not the fruits I was trying to force, but fruits that come from Him. I have to have faith that the fruits God wants to birth in me are more then the fruits I have been trying to create.

I don't know what this is going to look like, if I will be bring my shop back. There is so much my heart that breaks for this. I have had such a huge plan for my little shop, but I have to give those plans up. I know that His plans are bigger then mine, so here we go. Lets see what God is going to bring into my nest, since I'm cleaning out all the junk that I brought in here.

A Nesting Heart

When my nesting started I sat down to make my list. The list of all the things I wanted to get done before baby girl pate make her big debut.  Things to clean out, wash, make, move, things that seemed so important right now. Things that in the long run wont matter so much. So what if I don't wash every persons clothing in baby laundry detergent? What if the blanket I've been working on isn't finished by the time shes here? Or if kids clothes aren't labeled, organized and boxed away according to color and size (really I'm not joking that's on the list).

This sense of nesting feels like it comes deep from in my heart. It's like all I want is for baby girl to pate to come into this home and feel loved. Feel like she is part of this family, a welcomed huge part. I want her to know and feel she is a part of my heart. A list of items to clean isn't going to do that.
 
Opening my heart is the only thing that will.
See I have a secret.  I'm scared of this girl mom thing.
It feels like I am going to break this little girl. That so much of who she is, is going to be on my shoulders. From the way she looks at her self, to how she looks at others. If she holds her head high, or hides around the outskirts of life.
I feel like so much of the responsibility of her, as a whole, is on me.
I know I'm going to fail, because I fail at these things.
I say awful things to my self, hide in the maybes of life and wait for everything to fall around me. 

So I am going to nest into the promises that I know in my heart.
I am not enough, but He is.
I am going to fail, but He wont.
I might hurt her, but He will heal her.
I might love her with all my soul, but He loves her more.

He loves us both and is bigger than my failures.
That is what I have to nest in.

Settling into Our Nest

I have a confession.
I might be the worlds worst housekeeper, sometimes I feel like the worst wife because of it. When the Hubby and I first got married I had this image in my head of everything I would do. All the laundry, a clean house, dinner on the table every night (healthy and homemade of course) all while having a job and becoming something more. Basically I had a case of the new bride syndrome. It is a high dangerous syndrome, brought on by months of dieting, studying white vs antique white, beading, tulle, sleep derivation, and a sugar high that takes months to move past.

Just like any sugar high I crashed, and by crashed I mean screamed at a friend in her dinning room that I was ready to walk after six months. Little did I realize it was my bi-polar flaring its head.
Little did I realize this house keeping, homemaking thing was something I was going to struggle with.

You can tell my mental state by my home. Not just mental but the state of my very being by my home. For the past year, as I fought tooth and nail for any sort of mental health, my home has been anything but homey. Now I am not saying I think everything should or could be spotless and perfectly in place every day of my life. I have two little boys, and a baby girl on the way, there is nothing spotless about that combination. I am talking more about taking care of our things, before a threat of a havac team moving in. Okay it didn't get that bad, I think.

Over the past few months with my new sense of clarity (aka, medication) I have had an over whelming sense of a need of home. Sense of my nest being a priority. I want us to settle into our nest, for it to be a safe place for our family. A place to feel recharged, loved and connected.

To me that doesn't mean perfectly swept floors, it means grace.
It means living the day as full as we can without business.
It means creating room for quite, for simple, for our nest to be ours...

Not what another persons, pinterest perfect home looks like. I know so much of it is me. My need to compare, my need to be perfect, my need to be normal. The graceless way that I look at myself. It is time for me to build my test, instead of tearing it down.

31 Days of Nesting

When I first started looking into jumping into this 31 days series it was easy to pick nesting. After all, I am in the throws of crazy nesting, why not use it? A few wishful shopping post, DIY's, and a hormonal rambling here and there and this last month before baby girl pate comes would be easy.  That was until two nights ago.

I was laying in bed, in one of those pregnancy toss and turning moments, mentally check off some topic list. Nesting in the living room, nesting in the laundry room, nesting into... God.
Wait what? My brain and soul started spinning. How? How do you nest into God? As I rapidly tried to go back to my Pinterest inspired nesting list, I kept going back.

Nesting into God.

Nesting in more....

It was one of those moments where all I could do was think, crap. You know you've been there. Something that once seemed easy now seemed like it was going to be a lesson. I'm not always a fan of those moments. Especially, almost 8 months pregnant and looking of an easy A. (not that this is a graded thing but you know what I mean.)

So here we go, while I prep, clean, organize and nest our home before the baby comes, I'll be nesting my heart too. What if there is more to this nesting urge then just scrubbing base boards and dusting areas that we haven't touched in years. What if my heart needs a little nesting too?

31 Days

I've always to do a 31 day series. The thought of writing about the same thing for 31 days straight seems so stretching, but at the same time scary beyond all belief.  I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm going for it. I'll be linking up with The Nesting Place for her annual 31 days of ______ post. You can find all the information on her blog.

So what to do 31 days of? Especially when there is a chance that during those 31 days a baby could be coming? Honestly, Ive been wracking my brain for a days now, I keep coming back to one thing. Nesting.

I know, seems like a no brainier but there is so much going through my mind about the whole idea of nesting. Not just painted wall but, so much more. It just seems to be where I am at, so why not talk about it?