How to Find Your Space

I love to rearrange furniture. It’s not because I’m incredible at home decorating or desire to be the next Joanna Gaines – frankly, our home layout limits the variety I can choose from when I shuffle the sofa from one wall to another. It’s also not because I’m an expert at maintaining a clean home. When we were at the store over the weekend Madi saw a Bath Fitter stand and I seriously considered looking into it instead of putting a little elbow grease into cleaning our current shower.

Plus we just spontaneously purchased a snow blower while we were killing time at Lowes the day before, so financially a bathtub cover-up wasn’t an option. Though very, very tempting.

I rearrange furniture when I’m stressed or overwhelmed. When my head feels too crowded and the world feels too bossy, moving our sofa or our dining room table or Madi’s shelves makes me feel like I have something I can control. Organizing my office in a new way makes my head feel clear – like I’ve somehow created mental space by creating physical space where I work.

At church this weekend we read the story of the paralytic man in Luke 5 – the one whose friends rearranged the roof of a house Jesus was in so they could bring their friend to the Healer. It was too crowded inside – everyone had pushed in, claimed their spot, gathered around until the only way to get in was to go up. Impressed with what The Message calls their “bold belief,” Jesus forgave AND healed the man (in that order).

With “bold” as my word for this year I started to think about what it would mean to be bold in the crowded situations. When I know in my heart that God has called me to write or speak or teach or share and yet I feel like I’m on the outside of the crowded house, knowing I need to get to Jesus but feeling stuck on the outside.

When it’s too loud, too gossipy, too overrun with the important and famous people with loud voices and huge platforms, what will I do? What will you do? Will we be the kind of women who courageously and boldly choose to go up instead of in? Will we make our own way to Jesus, one that looks more than a little messy, a little unconventional, away from what the popular people are doing?

I want to be that kind of woman. I want live a life of bold belief that I not only know what it is that God is calling me to do, but also be willing to use the gifts and talents and skills He’s given me to do everything I can to get myself to the feet of Jesus so He can clear me to go and do the thing.

Find a new way today, friends. Go to the roof. Seek Jesus boldly and bravely and be willing to do the work, to do the unexpected, in the name of Jesus.