I try to make this clear pretty often. Although the most prominent areas of our home are doing pretty well since I started this process, the peripheral areas, such as the bedrooms, closets, pantries, cabinets, and any and every drawer are still incredibly scary. We’ve been having Sunday night home groups meet in our home for the past few weeks (something I probably wouldn’t have volunteered to host before this process) and my pulse quickens whenever anyone walks by my bedroom door. My kids’ rooms are almost as scary as mine, but if someone opened their door, I could just laugh about how kids can be.

But, if someone opened my door, I would have no one to blame. But me of course. It would be humiliating. There are clothes EVERYWHERE. Clean clothes and dirty clothes, gradually becoming one. There’s the HUGE suitcase full of winter clothes that needed to be taken to the attic when the warm weather hit, but now the cold weather is back, and it’s time to get them out again. There’s the huge pile of who-knows-what on my dresser. There’s the sea of miscellaneous clutter by my side of the bed.

I need to slow down. Last week and this week have been crazy with something going on every single day. Six-week conferences, awards assemblies, plus all of the normal activities have kept me from having a productive day at home for more than a week. I’m ready to make some progress again. As I’ve said before, I’m feeling hope now. The feeling of “why try if I’ll never maintain it” is getting to be less and less as I am maintaining it. So now I want to try.

I have a wonderful opportunity to volunteer my time tomorrow afternoon. I really want to do it. I’ve been waiting for this opportunity to come along. Tomorrow would be the first time this year that I could do this.

But, it won’t be the last either. This opportunity will come along again, so it’s okay to pass on it tomorrow. I need to work on our home. If I don’t go tomorrow, I can spend the entire day at home, working. I’m learning how much can be accomplished in one day when you have some traction going.