Monday, May 30, 2011

Providence of God

You can call me superstitious but I felt like I needed to rethink my post that is still lost. Maybe, it was not supposed to be published... Perhaps, I should have included more pictures. Perhaps, I should have made it brief. Perhaps, I should not have separated the story to a "Part 1", "Part 2",... etc.

Perhaps.

While thinking it through, I thought through the progresses in my home and Providence of God just came to my mind...

A lot has happened since February when I started this blog. I wanted to get my home in shape, as I did every year before this. It has been my yearly New Year Resolution. But this year, I have a few more external motivation. My trip with the kids out of the country in June, leaving my husband in this home alone for about 3 weeks; my desire to serve as a Bible study leader at our fellowship; my youngest one may start going to a little bit of preschool; and the possibility of me returning to work; etc. With all these reasons, and some sort of a time-constraint, I feel like God is putting together something and I imagined that my house would look different before school year end.

Before
After
But it did not happen the way I envisioned. Even though I knew that I, or my habits, could not be changed overnight, I still think that I would be making most of the initiatives and doing most of the work. The truth is, I simply cannot do it by myself.

As a life-long procrastinator, even with the time-constraint, I stopped making progress whenever there was a lack of immediate deadline. There are always some other things to do. Thanks to Project Simplified, I had mini deadlines every week for the month of March and first week of April. Then, I found myself struggling with laundry alone. Just when things come to a standstill, my husband reminded me of my sister-in-law's visit in the beginning of May.

Because of the visit, my husband actually asked me to hire house cleaning. But I was, honestly, really afraid of doing that... They need to find the floor before they clean it, right? But my kitchen floor was a disastrous zone. For this most overwhelming job, I got unexpected help. The mom of my son's best friend and I have only chatted during pickup or drop-off a few times but she offered to help!

All of these work together and I have not even mentioned how many other moms have helped me babysit my toddler so I could get some things done. Now, I can see the floor around my desk and most surfaces in my home are very much cleared. Just like the other mom said, all these things I saw everywhere also cluttered my mind, made me feel overwhelmed. Now that the surfaces are mostly cleared, keeping up is truly easier. True, I still struggle with procrastination and lack of motivation to do housework. But it did not feel like a huge load of weigh on me any more. It was lightening.

Suddenly, I am not so afraid of unexpected visitors (Well, there will still be toys on the floor, but let's be real, kids need to play) All of these progress in my home was not because God has changed me to have better organization skills or ability to work faster (or sleep less!), but because He has provided me with help from people around me, encouragement from friends including those met on the internet and guidance from many wise voices. 

Those were Providence from God.

Friday, May 13, 2011

Blogger Buzz: Blogger is back

Blogger had a technical problem yesterday. Users cannot write, edit or post. They have rolled back to a version on May 11 according to Blogger Buzz: Blogger is back Unfortunately, my most recent post on May 12 is "in the progress of restoring" :(

[ETA: BTW, do you back up your own posts? I haven't, so, I should either rewrite it or wait for it to be restored, which I kind of afraid wouldn't happen... ]


[Added 5/16/11: My lost post is... still missing. On top of that, I cannot reply to comment on this post, very weird! For those who by now wanted to keep a backup of their own blog, I found a smart solution on the forum - you simply subscribe to your own blog and you automatic get an email back up, how simple!]