Cultivating Home
Sometime in the fall, an ad popped up for Real Estate coaching, which led to this mom of three with a growing team and the kind of real estate business I want long term. And she was selling a coaching program which ultimately led to joining said team…I didn’t buy her coaching program or join her team, but I did have one big take away from the 20 minute video I watched.
She was talking about reading…she said she stopped reading as much as she could and started picking just a few books to master. She read them over and over throughout the year until everything in the book that was for her, was implemented. A light bulb went off!!
Not long after I was listening to 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and one thing he said that immediately tied to what this coach said, is “learning without doing isn’t learning at all.” Sooo…
Cultivating Home. Intentionally. The rhythms and culture that make up the life inside our tidy four walls. Two books I want to be a student of this year with home are:
Habits of the Household
Every Moment Holy
I’ve read Habits of the Household one and a half times now. First time to understand the heart of the book, and the half time has been to start implementing. It’s been slow and the binding is now falling apart because it’s become a workbook of sorts, but it’s been so good.
Every Moment Holy is a book I want to use…I want it to shape my eyeballs and how I view what unfolds in the hard and the good. I want it to infuse prayer and humility for the gift in the day to day. And I want to bring my kids in alongside that and show them how to steward everything back to God.
In December during my social media break, Jason and I had a really pivotal conversation for me. We were actually talking about our parenting and some of what I’ve learned in HOTH (thats Habits of the Household because wow typing that every time is woah lol). Anyways, we were talking through some habits we have and how we wanted them to be different. How we wanted to SHAPE those things better…here comes the pivotal.
I said “I want our kids to know Jesus, to know God’s word and to be able to stand on it when the shit hits the fan and KNOW He is good and He is faithful and He will get them through. (I began to monologue I think somewhat preaching to myself) I want them to hope that it’ll be ok, even when it’s beyond difficult.”
I was crying at this point…and Jason said, “but you don’t believe that.”
Shots fired, call the paramedics. He was right. August broke me. When Canaan went to the ER, I got mad. I got the floor ripped out from underneath me and I felt like God had left the building. Because why? Why was that necessary? Why after the last five years of surgeries and getting through the one that was “the last one” did we have to rush back to the emergency room. I found my answers in wine, and numbing, and running, and more wine. Until in November, after six bottles in five days, I sat in our library crying and told God “If I keep this up I will literally die, and part of me is ok with that but maybe a bigger part isn’t, so I need you to help. I’m mad at this being his reality, but I’m mostly sad that you’re allowing it, and I need you to help me see your goodness in this because right now I don’t.”
So December, when Jason said the true things, I just replied with “no, but I want to.”
I don’t know why I shared that other than to say, I’m not speaking from a place of arrival. I’m speaking from a place of drudging through the messy to get back to a place of hope. Maybe they are one in the same, I don’t know. Maybe the mess is integral in the hope. Whatever the case, these two books are shaping my heart so thought I’d share.
Thanks for being here.
