Stiving For Simplicity

The road to simplicity is a hard one. We are forever pulled back into our chaotic modern lifestyles - mainly by our own doing. Last spring I convinced my husband to allow me to rent a dumpster for a week. I went through our house top to bottom and got rid of so many, many things. We filled the dumpster once and half filled it again by the time we were through. I am so glad we did it. Yet, if you look around our house now, it still seems so cluttered, so full of STUFF!

Don't get me wrong, a lot of that stuff is good stuff. Our family is interested in so many wonderful things. We love music and have many instruments and tons of sheet music, we love scrapbooking, good books, sewing, teddybear making, photography, knitting, rocketry, model trains, and computers - and there is all the stuff that goes with those wonderful hobbies. The hard part is finding a home for it all - and if the home is in a not-so-accessible place, as some of those homes must be - it makes it that much harder for the stuff to find its home when we're done with it!

So we look around and wonder, where do we find simplicity in a life that is Full and Blessed with so many good things? I've been reading The Plain Reader and Carla Emery's Encyclopedia of Country Living as we look forward to and prepare for our probable move to the country in April - and it is so incredibly inspiring. But I have to take my heart filled desire for that Little House lifestyle and mesh it with the reality of OUR family's life. I don't think my husband would go for life without electricty - and much as I might THINK I want it, it would be rather difficult for me to continue my web-based businesses without electricity and computers!

I look forward to another chance to use that dumpster before we move, that's for SURE! But at the same time I have to remember that my simplicity will not be the simplicity of Little House, or of the Amish, or of any friend or aquaintance I've ever met. In the midst of the struggle - the apparent contradiction between striving and simplicity - there is a place, deep inside, where there is no striving - only perfect simplicity - because I know that right now, we are in the place God has for us - and as we move toward the country life, I know that there also, will be the exact right, God ordained place for us....