Happy New Year!

I love new beginnings. Sometimes, it seems that starting over is the only way to get rid of the clutter and chaos that seems to accumulate no matter how I try to keep it under control. Change is an interesting - and often frustrating- process, yet it is one of my favorite aspects of life.

I have learned that sometimes change comes slowly. I don't always like to admit that, nor do I like to sit down and map out the process, especially if that process could possibly take days, weeks, months, or years to complete! I'd rather everything only take a few hours ;-)

Recently I was talking to some of my friends about organization and keeping up with chores and so on and so forth, and FLYlady (www.flylady.net) came up. I thank FLYlady for so many things, and even though I don't follow "her" routines anymore to the "t", I thank her for teaching me several very important things. The first is that it's okay for change to come slowly, bit-by-bit, over time. Changing too many things all at once sets you up to crash-and-burn over and over again, plus it's overwhelming. Change that lasts is the kind that changes you at your core: it changes your habits, your mind-set, and your entire thinking process. This kind of change comes in what FLYlady calls "baby-steps". I tend to want to take more of a "Clean-Sweep" approach to change, but this never sticks! I learned from FLYlady that I need to look at the big picture of the chaos that is my life, pick ONE thing I can change, and spend the next 30 days making a new habit and breaking an old one. Just ONE. Yes, it seems like it will take forever to get anywhere at that rate (!), but it really doesn't! I look back over the past 6 years since I met FLYlady, and I am amazed at how many things I've changed about myself and how much happier I am because of it!

The second thing that I learned from FLYlady was that "clutter" and "chaos" are heart issues. If you live in clutter and chaos on the outside, chances are there is alot of mental and emotional clutter and chaos that needs to be taken care of on the inside. It really is so true. You can work through those things in the same "baby-steps", changing one thing at a time. And you don't have to do it alone either: Proverbs 20:27 tells us that the Spirit of Yahweh will search the innermost parts of who we are and help us clear out that clutter too.

I think everybody has areas of their lives that need to change. I think that if we stop changing and growing, then we must be dead! I encourage you in this time when "resolutions" are being made and "change" is in the air, to diligently look at your self and set some goals for your life - spiritually, emotionally, physically - whatever. Not just because it's the "thing to do"at the dawn of the New Year, but because you really want to move your life in a better direction. Pick one thing at a time and change that. Once you've made a new habit, add another, and see lasting change make your life fuller and richer. Happy New Year!