Cleaning Up and Cleansing Out

I've been on a bit of a journey in the past year of simplifying, downsizing, minimal-izing, whatever you’d call it. I believe it kicked off when the book, The Magic of Tidying Up:The Japanese Art of Decluttering And Organizing hit the shelves. I read it and was kinda taken aback by it; finding an underlying truth in this book about myself. I’d been burying my feelings in STUFF. So I started taking on some of the “ways” from Marie Kondo.
First I started with throwing out a bunch of stuff...then doing it again...and currently I’m doing it again. You may ask how I got into this BIG MESS in the first place!? See, when My Girl first became sick, it wasn’t her epilepsy, it was leukaemia. It was two and a half years of chemo, 8 months straight of living in Vancouver, BC and then going back and forth between Campbell River and Vancouver for the rest. So much busy crazy insane times. I love to say I turned to God, which I did do, but that wasn’t the only thing I did. I turned to shopping. And in the process neglecting financial reasoning and reality. If it was on sale, i could think of a reason to justify buying it. Shopping “helped me” to have those quick pings of gratification and “happy” feels. This did cause us some long term pain in our financials. But in the end after a good hard shake into reality, we are dealing and I have learned from the mistake.
Through that though, it took me some time to get out of the “shopping rut” and I found myself drowning in our home...it was awful! Crammed full. As I’ve been swimming in this stuff for a number of years it’s created a lot of internal chaos for me and in turn, I think for my family. My goal is to create a home of peace for my family. Space isn’t an issue, the house isn’t small, it’s the stuff I’ve crammed in there, with no true purpose.
So far, it’s been a going and stopping process, depending on what is happening in our family life. We are on a regular emotional rollercoaster. But I can say that when I get a space to where it feels clean, cleared and purposeful I feel so much lighter. So much more myself. Like a piece of me is peaking through this chip in the wall I have built up around myself. So not only do I find this journey cleansing for my home, but God and I are also working away at my heart. Trying to break me free of the past, and bring me forward into this beautiful life He has for me.