Learning to Thrive in the Mess

I’m up early this morning. Sometime around 2:30 AM I found myself wide awake–in that space between “If I just get up to go pee, I could fall back to sleep”, and “This is it…I’m awake now”.

My belly growling–reminding me of the poor choice I made to not eat a small snack before bed. I felt guilty because I enjoyed a peanut butter cookie while I was studying for my pastor class this weekend so I may have unknowingly “punished” myself by not eating a snack. “Well, you got your calories in, that should be enough.” But it’s not ever enough, and I know that, but giving myself grace to just eat something and go against all the food rules is hard. So, if I don’t eat before bed and I don’t eat enough during the day, I’ll be up between 2-4 AM with my liver begging me for food.

I tried to shallow my breathing to match that of my husband and my daughter. Nice, deep breaths…trying to practice the tools I have been given, but knowing full well we are on the cusp of the cutoff time where I will need to get up if I want any time to myself/to get things done before everyone wakes up. So instead of forcing my brain into submission, I give in and roll out of bed. Quietly as to not wake the baby. Body pillow in my place so she can’t roll out. It’s 3:30 AM now, but I was awake at 2:30, so I know a nap is in my future so I’m not a grumpy mama all day. But it’s worth it for a few hours alone.

In our Autism home, my oldest also struggles with sleep similarly to how I do. Like clockwork he will be up at 5 AM every single day. When he was younger and people used to tell me, “Oh just get up an hour earlier than your kiddos to be successful”, I laughed. Because if I got up, he was up. Never failed. And if I don’t quietly tiptoe by their bedroom in the morning, even at this time, I risk waking him. I have almost mastered the art of the tiptoe. At least today we are safe.

Grab a cup of coffee and a gluten free cinnamon raisin bagel with cream cheese and now here I sit. People often ask me how I regulate…and the other day when I wrote my post about how hard Autism can be, I remembered how regulating writing is. In the crazy and chaos, it is often the first thing to go for me. The first thing to be set aside, but it is the very thing I need. I need to process. To share my story in spaces where it might not be forgotten.

And after this post, I will move into my quiet time with the Lord. This morning I am thinking so much about a house we viewed last week. My brain is so visual and it’s hard for me to not “move into” spaces prematurely. So I already know where all my furniture would go. I saw laughs and even some squabbles between the boys. I saw quiet mornings sitting at the kitchen table with the sunlight pouring in and hot steam from the coffee rising up in the early morning atmosphere. I saw kitchen counter space in abundance and a homeschool space that made me drool a little. I saw our first gathering with the church and I imagined saying, “Here’s what you’ve prayed for!” While I have the smell of Thieves or Christmas Spirit oils wafting dreamily through the air from the diffuser. Cozy. Home. A space I could be proud to invite anyone into.

The rental market is brutal right now and I am hanging on for dear life over here. If you are new around here, we are looking for a new home because our current home of 4 years has a major mold problem and it is no longer safe for us to live here. The landlord needs to gut the side of the house and cannot do that while we live here. He has been good to us for the last 4 years, so we will go quietly. But finding a place is proving to be a major patience and endurance trial.

But God has been moving in me in this season of endurance–reminding me that He wastes nothing and uses everything I go through for His glory and for my good. He sees what I can’t in the future, so while I wait to hear if the owners of this house have chosen us or not, I trust that He will open and close the right doors. I trust that if this house is not for us, and all the dreams I am working so hard not to have about the house go right up in smoke, we will be okay. I will be okay. I know that we are moving into a new season. I felt it so strongly yesterday morning in my prayer time. I have been feeling pretty low about this whole process for awhile now. Not necessarily low like depressed…just discouraged at times. Some days are better than others. But I wouldn’t say at any point I was just filled with so much joy. Yesterday morning it came over me so fast and dropped so quickly into my spirit that I knew it was coming from the Holy Spirit. I was and have been filled with joy since! I was writing in my journal and what I had written was “The hard season is about to break. We are on the verge of BREAKTHROUGH!” And I had this strong knowing that it was really true! The end is near. The tears will be turned to dancing. The mourning will become joy. The healing is coming.

My favorite thing about my office here in our current space is that the window points east and because I get up so early, I get to watch little wisps of color from the day’s sunrise start to paint the horizon. Pinks and yellows and light blues dance along the tree lines and a sunrise is never missed on me. I have tried so many times to paint it, but my skill never quite matches that of the Great Artist Who paints the sky every morning.

And I guess this morning my eagerness to get up might have more to do with my desire not to miss even a single wisp of the sunrise of our new season. One thing I have been focusing on in this season is what I can control. So that is cleaning up and purging and prepping my current home for packing and moving. I have a history of not necessarily “hoarding” as I once called it, but more of holding onto things because I don’t have the bandwidth to go through it. So instead of purging as I go, I tend to throw things in boxes or bags until I can find time/energy/brain space/emotional energy to go through it. Well, over the years that piled up on me.

I remember living in Florida and dragging boxes and totes with me everywhere because I couldn’t go through them. In reality, had I gone through even a box or a tote a day or even a month I could have knocked all of that out, but I didn’t understand that or how to do that then. That’s something I have learned this year. So I have not had full use of my kitchen now for years and often I’m too embarrassed to have anyone to my house because of the things that pile up. My husband has been so kind and patient with me in this healing journey. I’m grateful to him for that.

Yesterday I went through and unpacked the final box in my kitchen. Now I just have a bag of toys in there we need to go through and put in their respective homes and then my kitchen is done. I will have purged and mostly organized it. First time in the 4 years of us living here. I feel so many things right now, but the biggest thing is gratitude. (I still need to do my office, and redo the kids’ room and eventually the basement, so there is still work to be done. But for now I’m feeling really good!)

I felt Jesus say to me, “Show me you can be faithful in this smaller place, and then I will give you the bigger place.” Up until this point, I don’t feel like I have been faithful–at least not as much as I could have been. I did my best considering we went through a pandemic, back and forth between school and homeschool, and so much more. But I know that He wants to know that I will be faithful and since I committed to doing these projects and getting things in order, I know I am finally being faithful. And that’s where I feel really good. Because I don’t want my family to miss out on blessings because of my own disobedience. Yes, my family needs to help with the messes and cleaning, and I find as I do the deep cleaning and make it less overwhelming, they are now able to see when there’s a mess they have made and they will clean it. Yesterday I enforced putting things away right after we finished playing with them, and they didn’t fight me at all. They just did it! That’s been a constant struggle for years now, so they are enjoying the fruits of my hard work and are reaping the benefits–they are seeing me do this and are learning now too! Even little Hope will pick something up and put it back. That was not something either of my boys did at her age so I feel hopeful that she will have different tools then they did and won’t have to learn these harder lessons later in life like they are. The anxiety is lifting in our home and I truly believe that’s majorly due to the cleaning of the space.

I don’t know what this day will hold, but I love giving my days to Jesus. I love seeing the work He sends me to do each day and I love staying surrendered (mostly–ha) to His leadings and promptings. I look back at my days now and feel so fulfilled. I love taking care of my home. I love taking care of and homeschooling my children. I love serving my church and I love my family. I love teaching people how to live naturally and I love building businesses with my husband. I am learning how to find joy in the mess…how to look at the beauty around me, even when there are boxes and bags everywhere and everything isn’t “perfect”. I am learning that even if my housing situation is a mess right now, nothing is too hard for God. So I just keep giving it back to Him every day and focus on what I can control, and I let my Daddy find me and my family the perfect house for our next season. He knows what we need better than we do. 🙂

Have a great day!
~Nikki