Clean

I have been in a huge cleaning mode lately! If I were pregnant I would say that I was nesting, but I am not! The other day I cleaned my office from top to bottom. I wish that I had before pictures just so I could show you how different it is now. But, I'll show you some after pictures instead :)

My desk and back table complete with coffee cup, water bottle, portable aromatherapy pod, and dry erase board with upcoming events:


My clean desk:


Seriously, the after pictures do not do it justice!

I'm still in the middle of decorating my office and I desperately need to put pictures of my boys in it. I chose things to put in my office that make me smile.

My flower business card holder:


My bulletin board littered with pretty thank you notes, business cards, and colorful randomness (it's not crooked, I was apparently holding the camera crooked while taking the photo):


My chair with the plaid pillow:


Pretty, inspirational artwork:




I think it is important to surround yourself with things that make you happy, it definitely helps when things happen that make it tough to smile.

I also cleaned out my car this past weekend. I would show you before and after pictures of that, but I won't. I'll just tell you that it was a night and day difference. I got all the laundry done this weekend too. It was a fairly successful weekend, although I didn't get as much cleaning done as I wanted to.

All the cleaning and reorganizing I've been doing has made me think about the cleaning or reorganizing that needs to be done in my life. Straightening up my car and my office is great, but there's more important things than that. I start to ask myself things like "When was the last time you had a really good conversation with God?" or "Did you read your Bible this week?" or "What do you think about most often? Would that be pleasing to God?" For the past couple of years I've been re-learning what I think about God, church, sin, religion, etc. I've learned a lot about how the things we do or don't do are often more about the heart than the actual act. It has been freeing to figure out for myself whether the rituals that were once so important to me had any real basis on my relationship with God...but maybe it was a little too freeing. I focused so much on the fact that it was about the heart that I forgot to actually look at my heart. Is my heart right? Do I have the right attitude or am I being ugly? I'm realizing that "It's about the heart" is not a license to sin and it only applies if your heart is truly trying to please God. Doing things that I know are wrong--gossip for example--means that my heart isn't right and the whole "it's about the heart" excuse goes out the window. So, what does this mean for me? Am I going to go back to reading 3 chapters in the Bible everyday and praying for exactly 15 minutes, going to church every Sunday, sitting through service not paying attention but getting perfect attendence in God's lesson plan book? No, I want to read, pray, and listen because I want to, not because I'm supposed to. I want have a pure and clean heart before God so that when it's said "it's about the heart" I know mine is in the right place.

"Create in me a clean heart, O God"- Psalm 51:10