Spring Cleaning

I’m ready to clean things out thoroughly, but it is still winter here though warming trends are coming this week. I never trust March. It’s fickle. However, it’s time for some spring cleaning, the kind that can be done without opening the windows and dragging things outside.

But there is more than the physical overhaul cleaning a house requires at the end of winter. My business, emotions, and body need a healthy purge. It’s more important than ever for me to strengthen my connection with God while deciding what needs to stay and what must go.

The writing business is not for the faint of heart. It’s far too easy to wind up with too many emails and offers for things that supposedly help. You can join too many groups while trying all the things. I’ve cleared myself down to three groups. One I paid for a lifetime membership a couple of years ago and it costs me nothing to stay there. Another is always free. The last I pay for a higher premium membership now so I am able to promote myself as an author and a coach. This pay for group is not that expensive, but is my tribe as a Christian speculative writer.

The next fun is purging the emails I delete anyway. Sorry great people. I’m done taking way more time getting through email than I want to every morning and several times a day for those multi-mail senders. I need to spend more time on my business with what is working.

Emotionally, the February slow down was great and terrible. I’m elated with what I have accomplished over the past three years, but have mixed emotions about what I’m supposed to do next. This is where I have to cling to God. I have to determine if it is only emotions or a greater problem churning things up. If it is a greater problem that never changes, how do I get out of the spin cycle? The wrenching of my emotions over something better left behind is not worth it. It infects everything else, especially my relationship with my husband. We are different enough without the help of some other entity ripping through our emotions and adding confusion. Just like my writing business, something has to be purged so the right things can get the proper attention.

In all of this, my body has its own issues with multiple sclerosis. Pushing myself too much with work, getting stressed, and eating based on emotions doesn’t help my body stay balanced at all. When too tired or too sore, I can’t function and I have screaming fits of frustration. My husband has his own version of this. It’s not good when we both have bad days at the same time. Neither of us have bodies that function how God intended and some of it we can blame on ourselves, and some is the simple fact of living in a not perfect world. I’m not holding my breath for the latter, so I’ll work on what I can fix, like throwing more movement into my day.

I’ll always be a writer at some level. There are connections I know will stay for this coming season. Other things may have to go or change. That is okay. Change has always been a constant in my life and this season will sort itself out like every other one has when I kept God first. He knows how to direct you in your spring cleaning and any other mess you find yourself in.

Rely on God. You may be in a hefty cleaning cycle, but he’ll bring you through it. It’s these turbulent seasons of change where we learn the most about ourselves and that he is always there.

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