Like the rest of the Netflix world, I watched Marie Kondo’s series titled “Tidying Up” and caught the organizational craze that is bound to flicker out by the end of the month of January. Things like organization truly sparks joy for me (that’s for you, Marie). But in the last six months as my apartment has miraculously shrunken in square footage and the baby gear has taken over, I’ve come to realize I can only organize so much of my own clutter.

Samantha Ponder is one of my favorite women in the sports industry, not only for her talent, but for the authentic way she takes on life. Listen to any podcast she’s on, watch her on Sunday NFL countdown, or follow her on Instagram–she gets humble and real in a contagious way. When I heard her tell a podcast host last summer that she had gotten rid of 70% of her stuff, I was all ears. I had this lingering feeling that I was living the Costco lifestyle of buying in bulk and ultimately watching things collect dust in my crowded cabinets.

Even now, as I scroll through Instagram and follow accounts like @lifeinjeneral (who does incredible work, by the way), I cannot get over that yes, it’s great to be organized. But for me, if I needed that many organizational bins for my makeup, guess what? I think I have too much makeup. As Sam Ponder said, she got tired of trying to reorganize all of the stuff she had in organizational bins. There was only so much she could truly rearrange before realizing her issue was beyond tidying up.

And I guess that’s what I’m getting at. No, of course there’s nothing wrong with owning things and there’s actually nothing bad about owning things even if they don’t spark joy. But for me I realized I’ve been dealing with a contentment issue. And that contentment or lack thereof has actually hindered me from opening up my heart to God’s best for me and so I’ve been on a quest of less, for more.

I’ve listened to countless podcasts, YouTube videos, and books on living with less or minimalism, if you will. While I enjoy the entertainment they’ve provided, the conclusion I’ve arrived to has been that no one can tell me what to get rid of, what to keep, how much is too much, how little is too little to live with. All of the content I’ve consumed on the subject doesn’t necessarily lead to a changed life, but I’ve humbly tried to present these thoughts to Jesus because I think they matter to Him even if they sound silly to me.

When I was a kid, my Dad would read stories about Adam Raccoon to me and my brothers. Adam Raccoon, in one of the tales gets his paw stuck inside of a jar because he’s closed his fist around an olive (if my memory serves me correctly). Adam is in danger and needs to make a run for it, but he refuses to let go of his grasp inside of the jar that is holding him hostage. It isn’t until he lets go that his paw is freed and he can make his way to safety. This may be an extreme, but I want to live a life like Adam Raccoon after he realizes the “stuff” is not ultimately what matters.

I have a tendency to spend an embarrassing amount of time on any app that makes it easy for me to scroll: Amazon, Instagram, Pinterest, Target, Hobby Lobby, and lately even my grocery apps have me thinking of “more“. So often I find myself having to work my way out of the mindset that there is something missing.

That sweater that blogger said was a must? Is it really? I don’t look good in mustard, but maybe since this blogger is telling me to swipe up, mustard will look different on me this time.
30% off? Gotta have it. Nope. No I don’t. Because every time that thing is 30% off, I buy it and have yet to use it.
IKEA IS HAVING A DRESSER SALE. I’ll need a dresser next year, so let me buy it now!

Real thoughts I’ve had this week. The hilarious thing is I unfollowed a handful of fashion bloggers that Hunter laughs at. The concept of someone going into Target, trying on clothes and posting videos of themselves talking about each item on their insta-stories is something he’s still not over. But I’m just giving you my honest struggle. I wrestle with comparison with these kinds of girls, unfollow them…but still find myself on their pages. No one to blame but myself.

So what does this practically look like for me since I’m so great at failing at it? I’m simply asking God to help me live with less, so that I can be ready for more of Jesus. More of Jesus’s character. I want to emulate more of his gratitude. His steadfastness. When I picture Jesus in need in the Bible, I don’t ever read him rushing to action. The first thing Jesus does is acknowledge his Father. Amazing. I have never truly known or experienced being in dire need, I’ve never not known where my next meal would come from and I’ve always had security in terms of basic needs.

So if even Jesus, who had everything and nothing during his 33 years of life on earth, can ask God to provide him with direction and provision, I think that’s something I can challenge myself to do, too. Sam Ponder said the reason she doesn’t regret simplifying her life so significantly is because she is now freed up to make decisions on what she will wear so much faster, she is happier with the things she truly enjoys and doesn’t have to step over the things she does not, and she’s able to press into the person God made her to be that much more readily.

I love that. Godliness with contentment is great gain. So I am choosing less–for more! Take care and take heart,

Natalie

exulansis
n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

Copyright John Koenig; The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
http://www.dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/post/96261999250/exulansis

My mind has a tendency to feel a lot like the Atlanta airport. You might laugh at my specificity with the Hartsfield-Jackson airport, but to say I picture St. Louis’s Lambert or Chicago’s Midway just wouldn’t be true. The Atlanta airport feels peaceful and yet chaotic all in the same breath for me, like there are so many emotions to feel and not enough time to press into each one as it is rightfully owed. There are what seems to be a miles worth of moving walkways on either side of their massive hallways that should be classified as tunnels instead that will get you from one end a terminal to the next in a matter of minutes.

Even now, I can hear the sound of luggage wheels skidding onto the carpet before rolling back onto the metal ramp and its conveyor in the space between each walkway. There’s a certain rhythmic feeling, a specific pace that needs to be kept to stay in the flow of busy travelers. Each concourse has their own decorative vibe, my favorite being the dimly-lit stretch where you have to be careful not to miss a step from staring straight up at the lights. I get so mesmerized by the textured ceiling of color and the ambience that feels subdued and aquamarine.

While there is exhaustive noise from the shuffling of feet and a buzzing spirit of hurriedness, all I hear is silence while I’m lost in my own line of thoughts.

Life to me feels like everyone is hustling onto the moving walkways and I’m wandering my way in the in-between. On my own time, I’m carefully choosing to take the stairs. Not so much to avoid the congested elevators, but because I’ve never carried the sense that there is room for me on them. I don’t assume that people would think to make room for me if I were to ask.

And so I take the stairs. I stick to the far right of the hallway and allow others to pass. Sometimes I hold onto the hope that if I spend enough time sifting through the complexity of my feelings and ideas, I’ll be able to articulate them authentically if I’m ever asked. Offering them freely rarely feels rewarding. Instead, sharing my thoughts tends to feel like an inconvenience. Wrong timing. Things happening in the background. Minds failing to focus.

What I find to be important or eccentric to contemplate scarcely has the same effect on others. So I find my thoughts drifting through the Atlanta airport. I excuse the people I want to share my reflections with most of all with the idea that doing so would make them miss their next flight. Sure, I could give them the 5 minute version, but to simplify from the 30 minutes it may take to express the small stirrings inside of me would seem disingenuous.

Timing really is everything. I have a tendency to have the layover time while everyone else needs to get to Gate C.

One of my favorite things to do is to daydream. I spend half of my thoughts having conversations with people I’ve never met and taking adventures I’d never plan in real life. That’s fun for me to imagine and to picture myself doing incredible things. I love to create things in my mind as an outlet to my own reality.

The only problem with this, is at some point, I have to resurface for air. Practically speaking, I have an incredibly challenging time separating realistic outcomes to my desired expectations. I can envision myself making waves and living life to fullest in the eyes of Instagram. I can spend hours daydreaming and never day-doing.

Day-doing is not as easy. Day-doing means that I can’t control all of the outcomes of my efforts because day-doing does not exist in the imagination. Maybe I’ve lost you here. Maybe you’re one of those incredible people that is incredibly goal-oriented and you go after whatever you set your sights on. Maybe you are totally satisfied with your life and are just along for a good time. Maybe you have created a twelve step program for yourself and how you’re going to get from where you are to where you want to be, and it’s all worked out perfectly for you.

If that’s you, I’d love to be the first to present you an award for all of your achievement. Consider this your trophy for nailing your goals and knowing exactly what you want out of life and being successful in all of your endeavors. You are very deserving of a big wooden plaque with your name on it and gold letter balloons to celebrate you, because that is a spectacular accomplishment on your behalf.

But maybe–maybe you’re like me. Maybe life wasn’t handed to you on a silver platter and the world has not been your oyster up to this point. Maybe you’re wondering about yourself and asking questions and needing validity in what you’re doing. If you’re like me, you have doubts. May I be so bold to call some of those doubts, fear?

When I was in college, I was so positive that my major was going to launch my career into all that I needed it to be. I majored in business and absolutely loved it for many reasons. Not only did I understand it in a general sense, but I enjoyed studying business. I loved that it was a transferrable degree that would never box me in the way a Bachelor’s in Underwater Basket Weaving would. I really relished in the status it gave me, being one of the few women in my male-dominated classes–and killing it with my Strategic Management presentations every Wednesday Spring semester.

Most importantly, my college major was going to skyrocket me in my small business endeavors. Post-grad, I abandoned the dream of opening up my own salon/boutique after feeling the burnout of the industry. Sometimes I wonder if it was truly burnout, or hard work disguised as adversity that I couldn’t handle. Regardless, when I was handed a fresh start in a new town, I feel like I failed.

Applying 31 places with a business degree and enough leadership experience to at least qualify me for an entry level position, only to either hear silence or rejection from all 31 places was tough at 23. I had daydreamed about climbing the corporate ladder in a short amount of time, leather tote in hand (briefcases aren’t as cute). I’d be revered as a thriving woman in the business world.

I pictured myself in the pencil skirts and cute H&M blazers calling the shots from behind my giant office desk. In my wild imagination, I even had an assistant who not only was honored to have my coffee order memorized as one of her duties, but was my friend who loved spending all of her time with me. Somewhere, I am confident that my mother is laughing at my creativity. This hallucination was of course, accompanied by my fat salary that provided amazing benefits and all of the vacation time I needed.

That’s not how that happened. The only thing that transferred with me into reality was the cute H&M blazer that is now hanging in my closet with grease stains from deep-fried chicken. Yep, I went on to make my alma mater ridiculously proud to know I used my degree at a fast food chicken chain in the dairy lands of the Midwest. Humbly, it was never my resumé that impressed anyone. It was my family connections to someone who knew someone from somewhere that got me the interview.

I’m not sure why I’m still not over not being good enough for those 31 other places I applied to. I guess it was never about being “good enough.”

It was about showing up to the place where God wanted to do his refining within me.

That place just so happened to sell chicken and pay an hourly rate. I’ve spent the last three years wrestling with my status and my purpose, that I’ve at times easily missed opportunities to honor God where I feel unseen. It’s when I spend too much time daydreaming that I don’t let God show me where I can be day-doing.

Better yet at times, my eyes are opened to the opportunities I have to grow my character, but it just doesn’t always seem exciting. If it’s not extraordinary or signifiant or special, I rule out that it could ever be meaningful. That’s what I really want out of life: to experience deep meaning. To do things that have meaning and to mean something to people.

I just think I’ve had it all backwards. Let me articulate better for you. I struggle with the mundane tasks at my job. I mean, I truly have felt like my personality slowly approaches the slaughter house every time I open my email. So often, I have seen my work as insignificant because my co-workers don’t appreciate me the way I think I deserve to be esteemed or my boss doesn’t divert the meeting to announce five ways Natalie is indispensable at this company. That’s truly ridiculous to expect. And even after I say that, I still would really love that to be reality because simply put, I am motivated by recognition.

But it’s not reality. That is a daydream. It is however, my opportune moment to begin day-doing. One of the best things to ever come across my Pinterest feed was a quote that said, “If you don’t like where you are, move. You are not a tree.” I laugh because it’s very true and practical guidance. But I’d like to add an additional thought.

What if we were to see our disappointment in our circumstances as an open invitation to celebrate all that God is doing behind the scenes of our efforts?

What if I woke up every day and encouraged at least one person in my workplace by sending a two-minute email, praising them or thanking them for something positive they’ve done (See Shawn Achor’s book The Happiness Advantage, where he writes these very words)?

What if, in doing the small things, what was ordinary turned into a joyful experience? I think I spend too much time focusing on how to get out of my present circumstances and not enough time choosing gratitude for what they’ve provided. Beyond that, I may never, ever know the ways in which my work encouraged other people around me. If I’m more motivated by being recognized for what I do, then I’ve lost. I’ve totally missed the mark. I’ve daydreamed about the wrong the wrong dream.

But if I can wake up to the fact that I was given meaning and significance before I ever took a breath on this earth, I can not only get over the fact that my resumé didn’t land me a high-level corporate job, but I can ultimately get over myself.

This morning I was in the car with Hunter and between the two of us, we have big dreams. And they are awesome ambitions, and I think God honors people that dream because I know God wants the best for our lives.

But if we define success by achieving our goals the exact way we plan, success will always be a moving target. Hunter and I thought life would look vastly different than it looks to us right now, and we’d be lying if we said we haven’t felt a heavy amount of disappointment in the last three years.

He turned to me as he was driving and asked, “What if all that you are learning right now in this season is the very thing that is going to be what you need for the next chapter? What if you miss it and you’ll never know what God has for you right now because you’re thinking too hard about how you’re going to get where you want to be?”

I’m nowhere near arriving at the person I want to be, but I am awake to the fact that just like the seven dwarves can whistle while they work, I can daydream while I do. And even the smallest tasks, the most minuscule gestures can build our character on our way to who we were meant to be.

Take care & take heart,
Natalie