Summer of 7

This post is a two-part post.  Read this one first and then right after, go read the second part over at my friend Cyndi’s blog Walking in Grace and Beauty.  She has graciously allowed me to guest post over at her place so I could fit these two posts in one day.  Cyndi is a pastor’s wife that loves fashion and I think a perfect fit for these posts.  If you are a fashion lover too, you will love her and her blog!  So first, read this below and then head straight over there!!

On the surface, the clothing week of The Summer of 7 has been easy.  These 7 articles of clothing I’m wearing are a cinch.  The make-up thing has been awkward at times but overall both things are have actually streamlined my life. 

I think, though, that God had me take a look at the heart of the problem.  Because isn’t the heart usually the problem? 

I think in any situation where you have excess, you can remove the excess but if you don’t rearrange your perspective, it’s just going to keep coming back.  It’s like weeding without digging up the roots. 

I want to get to the heart of the problem but the first thing I want to address is the areas of concern for me.  Perhaps you can relate. 

Clothing

Well, duh.  I know this whole week is supposed to be about clothing.  On the surface it’s simply a numbers game.  Many of us just have too many pieces of clothing in our closets.  I touched on this last week so I won’t beat a dead horse but the fact of the matter is we just don’t need much of what we have.  Either it doesn’t fit or it’s out of style or it’s just not you or you just have so much that it doesn’t go into “rotation” often enough. 

I’ve been wearing only 7 articles of clothing this whole week and while I admit I haven’t been “in the mood” for some of these outfits, I don’t need to wear anything different.  Many of us could probably go weeks without washing clothes and still have some left in our closets.  It’s TOO MUCH.  Too many others could be blessed with what we have and I still truly think it has spiritual roots.

Challenge: Go give your closet a good purge.  It’ll feel great—after you get over the depression on how much you’ve let build up.

Money

The number of clothes leads us quickly to a different numbers game…how much it cost to begin with.  I can’t imagine how much money America spends on fashion every year.  It’s a lot.  As for me personally, I can easily drop a few hundred dollars in an afternoon.  I’ve always been kind of a cheap-skate but my weak spot has always been clothes and shoes.  $20 here and there and I’d have another huge chunk out of my budget.

God has been working on me for years.  When Dani and I started the Blood Water Belt almost two years ago, I  learned every dollar counts.  Blood:Water Mission says that one little dollar can give someone clean water for an entire year.  That $12 shirt at Walmart is even on deck for scrapping.  You could give a whole family or two water for a year.  I’m serious, ya’ll (me!).  Every single dollar matters.

I’m still not great at this.  But when I am successful, I always ask myself am I ok with clothing myself with this OVER providing help for someone.  It’s so hard to know the line and I still haven’t found it.  I just know that at some times, God gives me peace about owning certain things.  It’s no easy answer, I know.

One caveat to this is to say it does NO good if you just funnel your money to something else that is of temporary value.  I think we’ll get more into this during the Spending week but just food for thought for now.

Challenge: Look at your receipts/checkbook/Mint.com.  How much did you spend on clothes in the last 3 months?  Would you be willing to share that number?  Challenge yourself not to buy anything new for a few months.  Yes, months.

Time and Focus

You can get lost in Fashion magazines, Pinterest, blogs.  Heck, even, in your own closet.  Fashion can be quite time-consuming. Our time is important.  Why are we focusing so much of our time on something in the physical realm so much when there is so much else of eternal value we could be using our time?

Challenge: Stop a magazine subscription or unsubscribe from a blog or Pinterest user that really feeds your excessive behaviors.   Spend the time thinking about what you could to replace at least some of that time.

Others’ Focus

My preacher talked this weekend about a passage from John 3 I’ve never understood. 

The bride belongs to the bridegroom. The friend who attends the bridegroom waits and listens for him, and is full of joy when he hears the bridegroom’s voice. That joy is mine, and it is now complete.

He’s talking about being like the best man at a wedding.  Isn’t it so joyful to see two people you love get married?  He says that’s how he feels about leading people to Christ and see them fall in love with him.  THAT’S what I want my life to be about.  Having a hand in leading people to Christ to find an everlasting love.  Is that where our dress is leading people? 

By putting too much emphasis on our physical, what are we leading people towards?  Their next best outfit or Jesus?  A mind full of lustful thoughts or Jesus?  Jealousy or Jesus?

That said, I do think there are certain people who are legitimately gifted in fashion and I don’t want to diminish that.  I think we all just need to really assess in what ways God wants us to help draw people unto Him.  For a lot of us, fashion is not our calling but we spend time and money on it like it is.

Challenge: Make a reminder sign for your closet to double-check your outfit for appropriateness. 

We have to ask ourselves these hard questions about excessive behaviors.  Am I spending too much money on clothes?  Am I thinking about what I’m wearing too much?  Am I shopping or browsing too much? Are people fixated simply on what I wear?

The problem here is that we can’t fix these excesses by simply swearing off clothes (well we could, I guess.  Hello, nudist colony!). 

The question that these excesses and challenges lead me to is as a Christian woman that loves clothes, what is is my appropriate response to clothing?  I know this was kind of a negative Nancy post and there may be questions and “but maybes” after reading this one alone so I NEED you to head straight over to Cyndi’s blog and read the second part for some encouragement.

Below are the other Summer of 7 Clothing posts so check them out!

I am entirely unprepared for this week.  I hadn’t even thought about what my 7 articles of clothing would be until last night.  I quickly realized all my favorite clothes needed laundered so I stayed up last night washing a load.  I didn’t even pick out the last 4 pieces until this morning.  So here they are:

Clearly I’m in a black and blue mood for the week.  Fitting, no? 

So the idea is I’ll wear the black dress to church and work, the blue dress two days that Scott is home next week (at Scott’s request) and then mix and match the two tops and shorts the other days.

I’m counting the shoes as one but only picked bare necessities.  I’d wear the flip flops every single day but not sure my office would appreciate that.

To be honest I probably have picked out too many items to wear for 7 days.  I’ll embarrass myself here and say on the days I don’t go anywhere, sometimes I just wear the same clothes for two days.  I know.  I’m gross.  But not really.  All I do is sit at my computer most of the day and don’t even come near sweating or even stretching my clothes out.  I don’t see the number of clothes as much of a challenge.

What IS the challenge is WHICH clothes to pick.  I find already I have a lot of emotions tied up into my clothes and I want my outfit to match my mood.  When I feel blah, I wear jean shorts and gray top.  When I feel happy, I wear my blue top and yellow skirt and lots of jewelry.  Part of this week is figuring out what of that is acceptable.

Did I mention I’m not doing makeup either?  If you don’t know, I love makeup.  Ever since I was 15 or so I never left the house without it.  Ever.  It wasn’t until this past year I even attempted to go without it.  In fact, last year I became a personal consultant with Mary Kay because I bought it so regularly and wanted a discount.

But l’ll tell you a secret: ever since we went to the doctor back in February and he told me not only was I sensitive to gluten, but chemicals as well, I’ve been not wearing makeup most days.  And I kind of like it.  It makes getting ready so much easier.  However.  I really, really love putting makeup on. It’s a creative outlet to me and I don’t know if I’d ever NOT wear makeup for good.

In any case, I’m most nervous about the no makeup thing at work.  I’m sure no one will say anything but still. I think I have some pride wrapped up in there somewhere.

In fact, my hope is that God opens my eyes to all my blind spots and shows me some things I wouldn’t see without doing this.

Should be an interesting week!

Wow.  I was so ready to do this week of possessions.  Possessions week was actually the first and only week I had planned on doing when I first saw that Katrina was looking for bloggers to join up.  I knew my house needed a good shaking and cleaning out but ya’ll!  It’s hard!

The first day I gathered items from my laundry room, kitchen, dining room, living room and part of my office.  A few observations:

I didn’t have nearly as many things in my kitchen to get rid of as I thought.  I really thought I’d have boxes of things to sell but I didn’t.  Perhaps I just need to organize my cabinets and clean my counters to make it feel cleansed in there.

We had a ton of CDs and DVDs that we NEVER use.  Just as an example, I had Avatar, Pirates of the Caribbean and New Moon that I watched ONCE after I bought and then they’ve just sat there doing absolutely no good in my cabinet.  Why???

Purging hurt the most in my office.  I have a special love of books.  I seriously just love standing in a book store and looking out at all the books.  I know the heart and soul that goes into writing and then all the hands that touched it to get it to print.  I just love books.  But I have had books sitting around since I read them the first (and only) time and now some of them aren’t worth even $1.   And the worst part is I still didn’t want to get rid of them when I knew I couldn’t get any money out of them.  I figured it was better to let them sit there than to get rid of them for next to nothing.  Why???  Why would I hoard them when it’s very obvious I’m not reading them, no one else is and it’s simply taking up room in my office creating more clutter.  I mean, really.  I’m doing some deep digging on why I do any of it…spend $10 on something I’ll only read once, let books sit around when I know I won’t read them again, and then hoard the book when I know I’m not using it and can’t get money out of it.  Why???

The other oddity I’ve come across is my need to keep empty boxes of electronics.  I hate to admit this but I still had ALL THREE of my iPhone boxes, even from my 3G that I bought YEARS ago.  My initial intent on keeping boxes was to have the original box when I resell it.  But guess what?  I’ve never shipped an used iPhone in the original box so why in the world have I not just dumped the case each time I get a new one?  I still had my Kindle box, my web cam box and my digital camera box.  Why???

I’m not sure I have answers yet on all these why’s but I definitely see some attachments and habits that are not healthy.  I’m scared to touch my closet and see what I’m hanging onto and why.  As to what I’m doing with all these things…well first, if you are in the market for some DVDs or books, let me know and I might do a blog sale.  If not, my friend Dani and I are planning a huge double yard sale for charity in 2 weeks!  I can’t wait.

To check out more posts on possessions…

So it’s stress week and I haven’t posted a thing.  We spent a wonderful week in Hilton Head, SC.  I’ll admit planning a stress-free week during a vacation week was sort of a cop-out. I mean, who gets stressed with their feet in the sand during the day and a plate full of crab at night?  Well, come to think of it, I know people who’d get stressed about either of those things but that is neither here nor there.  I was not.

Although I didn’t have my normal stress points like getting work done AND taking care of kids or having too many errands to count, I did find myself in a few situations that I could feel stress coming on.  I tried to pinpoint the cause and came out with four trigger points

Fear

I shouldn’t be surprised.  Fear is definitely always been a trigger for me in so many areas.  But this week I realized that I get stressed when I have a fear of the unknown or fear of my family’s safety.  I think, think, think too much about all the alternative endings to the point I’m tensed and stressed.  I truly believe in so many cases I’m just being ridiculous. 

As a small example, the kids this year decided they could jump the waves by themselves.  I sat in a chair at the edge of the water but then I’d get worried and go stand in the water 10 or 15 feet closer.  Standing there, I realized that being 10 feet closer was not going to help a whole lot.  In reality, they were doing just fine by themselves and I could just LET GO of the stress.  The only thing it changed was my stress level.  Seriously.  Me being worried did not make the kids handle the waves any differently.  It didn’t make sharks not swim near them.  It didn’t emit some sort of force field so jelly fish wouldn’t sting them. Worrying did not one single thing to help the situation. 

Sure, we have safety issues to consider as parents but I’d guess most of the time our stress is fear-induced and POINTLESS.

Lack of control

I’ve been coming to the realization I can be a control freak.  When I feel things slipping, I get stressed.  This is especially difficult when I’m dealing with other people’s problems.  In my “real job,” I’m a problem solver.  People come to me with problems and we figure out a technical solution to them.  And getting to the solution involves even more problems to fix.  I like to know all the variables, pick a solution and go with it.  Again, I think, think, think until I feel like I have the best solution.  I try to do this with other people’s problem and it just creates a ton of stress for me.  Again, the solution to this is to LET GO.  Sure, I can care but that doesn’t mean I have to solve everyone’s problems.  I couldn’t even if I tried.

Unmet expectations

I’m not sure if the result of unmet expectations is more anger than stress but I got that tense feeling come over me when the girls just did not want to do what I wanted to do one night this week.  When we have something planned or expect something of someone and it doesn’t happen?  Stress!  We want things to happen the way we planned OR ELSE.  Can you think of the solution?  Yep.  LET GO.  It’s totally fine if plans change or you have to maneuver around a new set of circumstances.  Just GO WITH THE FLOW.

Disorder

The most stress I felt all week is when we were trying to get out the door to the beach.  I realized I had not planned enough in advance and I was washing clothes and dishes as were going out the door. I must have gotten out of the van at least 3 times to grab things I remembered last minute.  I realized if I’d have just prepared a little more in advance I could have prevented a lot of stress.  And even more than that, the things I did need should have been organized into a place where I would have known right where to get them. 

The ironic part of this point is that hard work sometimes leads to less stress.  You might think that being lazy and not working as hard would lead to a stress-free life but I’ve found just the opposite: work hard now and you can play hard later.  I just need to learn to balance that when all my plans don’t quite go as expected.

My take-away from this week can be summed up in the words of Timon and Pumbaa "Hakuna Matata, it means no worries for the rest of your days…”  Seriously, I just need to get myself organized, plan a little more and then LET GO.

Read more posts from the Summer of 7 participants on Stress and link up below!

My week of food for the Summer of 7 is over in just a few hours.  My original goal was no desserts, only water and no take-outs.  I can tell you what I missed: OJ in the morning, coffee and having a treat in the evening.  I honestly did not miss eating out one little bit.  Well, eating in at work was awful but as far as dinners went, I didn’t miss it.  Perhaps it wasn’t an excess like it has been in the past.  In good news, I lost a pound just by cutting that out.  Have I mentioned how I’ve lost 10 pounds since we went gluten-free (and I totally changed my eating habits)?  Hm.  Yeah.  And it seems to be staying off.  I’ve been maintaining the past month or so but this last week of basically cutting out the excess literally cut out a little excess on me. 

But most importantly, the lesson I’m taking from this week is from my Leftovers post.  When I give anything, not just food, I will be reminded of this week and remember not only to give, but to consider the quality.  And further, remember the widow that gave all she had, not just out of her abundance.  Ouch.  That still hurts.

As of this evening, it’s goodbye to stress.  I’m changing up what I had planned.  I’ll be candid here and say I hadn’t read the stress chapter in the book yet when I planned my “rules” but went ahead and put down what Jen had done.  I didn’t buy the book to do the prayers and just like Jamie, loading myself up like this I think would cause me more stress so I’m letting go this week.  I sat and thought of what relaxes me and here it is:

• Having coffee/interacting online with friends
• Reading
• Writing
• Doing nothing on the beach
• Spending time in prayer
• Spending time in the word
• Being creative
• Cooking

So there are no rules around those.  I’m just going to try to do them more.  We’re on vacation all week and it’s totally possible.  You might see a ton more posts this week because I write more or I may let go of any duty I feel towards writing.  Who knows!  It’s all about less stress, baby!

Below are the other FOOD week related posts.  You can still jump in and participate so don’t think it’s too late!