Fairly productive day today around the house. In our big room that we live in I have a table covered with my scrapbook supplies. For months it's been a disaster. I've cleaned it up when I have needed to work on it or when we've had company coming over, but otherwise, it's been my piling spot. That has been bugging me like crazy! And I have needed a serious chunk of time to tackle it and make it useable again. On Saturday, I was inside while Noelle was napping and thought that I would work on my scrapbooks for a bit. It just wasn't fun. My pages were boring and stupid and I couldn't get into it. I told Travis that I thought I was a little burnt out on my scrapbooks and needed to just put all of it away for a bit. And I really wanted to have the table clear so I could spread out my Bible study material on it - up and out of sight of tiny hands. So yesterday I started tackling the table. I put away everything that was on the table. I sorted random pictures and got them back in order. I put a bunch of pictures in regular albums just so that Noelle can be looking at them and they aren't in a box gathering dust. (I'll go back and scrapbook them, but at least they are out where we can enjoy them!) While N. napped this afternoon, I finished cleaning. My desk was clear and useable again. Like I said, I thought I was burnt out on my scrapbooks, but once was desk was clear and useable again, I was in the mood to work! I made two (simple) pages this afternoon - basically mounting two 8 x 10's that I want in her baby book instead of leaving them to gather more dust. Amazing when you have a clean surface to work off of how much more productive you can be.

Kinda like my relationship with the Lord. If I'm covered in gunk and sin and yuck and I try to make my self presentable and useable for him - it isn't going to work. He's just going to shake his head at me and say, "some other time, you're not ready for me." I need to be ever-ready for him to use me - just like it is so much better when my table is ever-ready for me to use it. Just by spending a few hours on it, I was able to work on my Bible study lesson for tomorrow and work on Noelle's baby book. Surely the same applies to my relationship with the Lord, just by spending some time cleaning up myself - praying, reading the Word, studying, and listening, I can be so much more useable to him than the dirty, messy state I normally present myself to Him and present myself for service thinking "I'll catch up on the clean up later." You know what? It doesn't ever get clean if you just leave it - the dirt just piles up and the stuff piles up and you have MORE to sort through when you find you aren't getting anything done.

Major parallels for me here with my God-walk. Who knew I could learn something so profound cleaning house today! God is good. :-)