When rearranging a few boxes taught me something about priorities

The dust still settles on the stacks of books on my nightstand and my husband's matching stack of non-book stuff on his nightstand.Yet, aside from those nightstand bundles, the rest of our bedroom has been recently cleared of clutter.

I prepared our home for a stay-cation where my husband & I celebrated 20 years of marriage at home alone without children. I took many boxes out of our room. I wish I could say that I truly decluttered rather than merely moving them to another room.

Nevertheless, taking the clutter out of our bedroom has helped me so much. Not just for a 20th anniversary week but also on a daily basis whenever I walk into our bedroom. It has given me clarity about priorities in the midst of undone projects.

Last summer I began helping our girls tidy their room.  Since they come from parental pack rats, it was a big job. We were unfinished sorting their stuff when we needed the dining room to host a baby shower for a dear friend. So we put the boxes of their stuff into our bedroom instead of theirs -- to help them.

Then, as life flew on by, a medical crisis took our lives by storm. I never got back to the girl's room project. After awhile the extra boxes just became part of the scenery and attracted even more boxes into our bedroom. We have a small house. In an effort to make room for people to come over, I moved more boxes in our bedroom. And here it is -- one year later.

It symbolized our life actually.

As we made room to take care of other people, we shifted the focus of our priorities. Last year my husband and I were called to  emergency foster care, and a father-in-law in the hospital for four months.We gave up a little time for one another during a demanding season of pouring out for others.

It has been a great opportunity to grow-up emotionally and spiritually. Yet, it pushed our focus away from each other. It had to. We are finite beings with limited energy.

It happens gradually this collecting of clutter,  to-do lists, and pressures to be responsible. And yes, there are times to put the boxes in the bedroom and host the shower.

Yet, now is the time to refocus on our marriage. That is what moving a few boxes has taught me.

I  have a visual reminder that I can make our marriage a priority even though pressures remain.

To do-lists, the clutter, the boxes never really go away. It was a season of pouring out for others that demanded more of our attention. Now, the challenge is to go back the focus of one another even though other pressures remain. To realize the pressure of projects and to-do lists is not the same as a father in the hospital struggling to breathe.

We need to keep it all in focus and not let the habits of the demanding season set the standard for the normal way of life.

I do this by taking time for a walk with my spouse even though there are boxes in the dining room that have needed attention for over a year. He is more important.

That is what I am learning by rearranging a few boxes in my house.

What have you been learning lately?
Linking up with Emily at Imperfect Prose.

What's on my nightstand?

No not all of these are on my nightstand! Whew! But one day
I would like to say that I have read all of the books on these shelves
(and before the First Born).
Right now I have read about 75% of them.

Over the weekend, we had out-of-town friends visit. I noticed that their son went to the car to get a book. I thought to myself, "I'm not reading any books. I don't have any books on my to read list."

Now why it took another person's son to reveal this to me is interesting since everywhere I go... and I mean everywhere...my children read...at the ball game (except the one playing baseball), at the oil change place, in the car going anywhere (even for a few moments down the road), in their beds, at the breakfast table. My children constantly have their noses in books. We even recently had two different people give us large stacks of books because my children are reading all of the time. But it must have been the newness of seeing someone else reading that triggered my compulsion to build a stack of books on my own nightstand. And then I discovered this:

And so I am joining in (albeit a day late):

On my 'nightstand':

1) Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, complete and unabridged. I read more books than my husband but this is one that he has read that I haven't. My oldest son and I are in a competition to be the one who has read ALL of the books on our bookshelves in our dining room (yep, almost every room in the house has bookshelves). And so this one must be conquered. Plus, I was recently reading on a blog somewhere about someone reading this book out loud to their children and everyone enjoying it. So that motivated me to pick it up.

2) John Newton by Aitken I purchased this at a Carole Joy Seid Homeschool Seminar (which I highly recommend if you are homeschooling or thinking about it). I have enjoyed all of the books she has recommended. I'm not sure why this one has gone unread. So now it too is in my newly-made stack to read.

3) Nick of Time by Ted Bell. I have chosen this book for two reasons. Last November, my sister-in-law and I were on a road trip to Chicago and started to listen to this audio book (and then I fell asleep; no worries, she was driving). The second reason is that my oldest son has read it and loved it. And so I want to read it, too.

4) Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis. I am going to participate in this July challenge. My goal is to re-read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Silver Chair. These three are my favorites. If I read through them quickly or just feel the urge, I may just read them all.

I know that I'll be blogging for sure about the Chronicles of Narnia as part of that challenge. And perhaps the others, too.

What are you reading this summer? Or do you have any good recommendations once I am finished with these?

Love, Kathleen