move forward

So, Memorial Day a few years ago, my husband, our daughters, and I went out on a lake at a local park. Two of us had a kayak, and two of us had a canoe. The mom that I am, I was trying to take pictures of my girls, and I was like, oh, look, let's capture this. Well, in doing so, I told them to come closer, and we capsized. We tumbled over...not the girls, but my husband and me. Oh, look, there's my girls, get a picture, uh oh, we're going down in slow motion, yet it was happening really fast. My husband was saying, don't let the phones get wet, and then we went into the water.

The thing about going into the water that I didn't quite get was this wasn't Disney World. I kid you not! I thought, the ride operators will come, and they will rescue us. They will help us out of this water. There are no ride operators in a park. It was a quick a wakeup call. We were on our own. I mean, yes, we had our daughters in the kayak next to us, and they were willing to help, but my husband and I could not get back in the canoe. Like, this isn't something we do all the time. This isn't something we've practiced or had lessons on or anything. We had life jackets on, so I am thankful for that, but it was too deep to push off the bottom of the lake, and the canoe was too wobbly and rocking for us to get ourselves in. The water was being taken on. We were in the center of the lake. There was no place to push off of. There was no side rail. There was nothing. And we weren't at Disney anymore. You know, we weren't in Kansas any longer. We weren't in Disney world anymore. It was like, this is real stuff here.

We sink or swim, literally, or we just bob around out here and float, and that's only going to last so long. I could not compute this, that they weren't coming to rescue us. We had to do something ourselves to paddle our way back and not only get ourselves back but get our canoe back. Now, fortunately, there were people on a kayak next to us, and it was quite embarrassing, because even these two little kids, they must have been like two and four, were just sitting there watching, and there's a cooler in its own kayak. This family is like, they're used to this stuff. They were prepared. They were having fun. They were relaxing. But my husband and I are, like, just trying to stay above water, even with the flotation devices on us. It was really uncomfortable. They came over and helped guide the canoe. We could put one arm on the canoe and paddle with the other, but we still had to do the work. We still had to swim all the 20 minutes back to shore. I am not a swimmer, and I was tired, and I'm a germaphobe. There were all kinds of, I don't know what in that water, but it was not clean looking. I had absolutely nothing else to do at that moment but suck it up, buttercup, and get going. Like, how long do you want to prolong this? Do you just want to stay here, bobbing up and down in water or would you like to get going so that you can get through this already and get to the other side and breathe, get out from the stuff that is making you feel like you're being pulled under and actually get to higher ground?

I say that because that lesson was a rude awakening, and yet we do it all the time. We overlook things that are our responsibilities as if we're waiting for somebody to come rescue us. Jesus already did come rescue us, but we actually have to do our part. He's the one with the rescue boat like those people that came alongside us with the canoe right and made sure we got to shore, were safe, and didn't drown, but we were also responsible for paddling. Now, it's not something we earn, right? It's something that is a grace given to us, this salvation and this power of the Holy Spirit that the Lord gives us when we're saved. But it doesn't mean we just sit there and bob up and down in life and then wait for God to rescue us. Out of our difficult circumstances, we are entrusted to actually do the work.

In fact, work was in the Garden of Eden. It was in Adam and Eve's job description before the fall of humanity, before they ate the forbidden fruit from the tree that they shouldn't have, they were to work the land. We have responsibilities. We have tasks. We need to sow good things so that we reap good things.

As I started spring cleaning and decluttering, I noticed that there were things that I'd been tolerating, I'd been putting up with as if they were going to magically change on their own. For example,  magically the silverware drawer that I try to pull out isn't off the tracks or the transition strip between the new flooring that we put down in one of the bedrooms and the carpet was going to magically appear when I didn't buy one or install it when we did the renovation or the hinge on this hope chest that we have that's been broken for years was somehow magically going to fix itself. So, I went to Lowe's and if you follow on Instagram, you'll be able to see my haul $40 later. I have about seven items that are going to fix those minor inconveniences, and I'm actually going to do them. And guess what they're going to do? They are going to save me minutes, hours, months, and years of frustration, but I have to take the time to actually implement them and do them and go forward.

You cannot expect different results if you're not going to put in the elbow grease every now and then. You get a nice benefit of how well that worked out. I didn't deserve that. That was easier than expected. A lot of times God expects us to swim alongside Him to sow good seeds. So, we reap good things when we take personal responsibility rather than assuming things are magically or miraculously going to get worse or better. No, we are where we are, and we need to do something with it. We need to work the land. Whatever our land is in our neck of the woods, we need to work the land. So those are my three things. Stop waiting for someone to rescue you, take charge, be a good steward, and go live your life.

I like to listen to this woman, Cass from the "Clutterbug." She's a woman who had a show for a couple of seasons about decluttering houses called Hot Mess House. If you need some help with that. Like I said, I'm decluttering right now. She's been a huge inspiration. I love her podcast. If anybody knows her and can connect me with her, please email me at michelle@mentallhealthforchristianwomen.com, and I'd love to interview her, but she just has absolutely given me the pep talk I need. A recent podcast that she had was basically saying that she was making excuses about not working out with a personal trainer. They weren't lies, really. They really were reasonable things, but they weren't going to get her the end results. She said that the personal trainer basically told her that if she wanted to see progress, she had to stop making excuses. I think that really underlies a lot of what I'm saying here.

If we want something to be different, we need to stop throwing up our hands and assuming it can't be different, we actually have to do something about it. Pray about it. Take the action, make the plans. Take the steps. God will redirect. Don't be afraid of getting it wrong. When you love the Lord and are called according to His purpose, He lives inside of you. In Him you live and move and have your being, so you don't have to worry about it. It's not like He's this cosmic I'm going to get you if you misstep out of my will, so you have to fear and do nothing. No, He's a creative God. He's a God of responsibility. He's a God of love. Take the steps. Trust in Him. Do the things.

Certainly, if you're waiting for somebody to start swimming for you, if you find yourself capsized in the middle of a lake, just start swimming. Just keep swimming. What do we do? But we swim, swim, swim. Just like finding Nemo. We just keep going. We keep swimming. We do the next right thing, the one thing that's going to make the biggest difference. That may be things like pitching the clutter that is taking up space in your home, that may be fixing the hinges or the drawer puller outer thingies like I'm going to do today and, in all love, just suck it up, buttercup. You're going to be fine. One step at a time. Take the action now. Stop delaying and expecting good results to just happen. Work with God, not against Him. Go with the flow. Don't swim upstream. Don't make it harder than it has to be, and certainly don't wait around and a year from now, find yourself in the exact same place. Whatever it is you need to take charge of. Do it. You will feel so much freer. Your mind will be less cluttered, too.