Is something out of place?

This weekend there was a bed in my kitchen.  Yes, a bed.  My college aged daughter was ready to give up her twin bed and trade out for a bed my mother bought when she was a young teacher long ago in Texas. My daughter, the artistic soul, had always kept a twin bed and trundle to accomodate her friends who visited, but we’d recently found a small loveseat with a sleeper so she was excited to change over to the bigger bed. One of the challenges of continuing to use antique things is that often we need to adjust them to make them functional. So on a cold Sunday morning I looked up to see Dh and daughter setting up a bed in my kitchen. It was chilly outside, there wasn’t room in the hall, so the two of them chose the kitchen in #thetackybrownhouse. For those of you that are new here, that’s the nickname of our 1955 house in a year(s?) long renovation process.

Having a bed in the kitchen wasn’t inconvenient at first as they worked on it, we had to shuffle to the other end of the room to pass each other, the backdoor was no longer accessible, but in the big picture of things only slightly inconvenient. However, the longer the day went on without getting it to its rightful home the more difficult the day became. There was that need of the Mr. Bingley the Shih Tzu (better known as the Mayor around our home) to go outside. I won’t begin to tell you how the Mayor fusses when HIS routine is changed. Then the backdoor blockage meant that firewood trips were an extra few hundred steps (my health thanked me, my cold tootsies did not) and before the end of the night, coming in from Sam’s on a Christmas cooking supplies run, it was much less convenient to not have a back door to unload from. (let’s just way I have my aerobic credit for the marathon amount of unloading in dashes from the truck to the kitchen in the cold…ps…I.do.not.run)

Then there was the mopbucket that couldn’t be put away…things were beginning to pile up in the pathway to the one washroom of the house…things were beginning to get more uncomfortable.

Ever have something in your life you know doesn’t belong where it is, or as often as it is, and at first it’s not much of a problem, but the continued imbalance it brings to your life begins to erode your ease?

It wasn’t that the repairs were not done quickly. It wasn’t even that it needed to remain in the kitchen past the first twenty minutes, it just was one of those things that got left by the wayside because it did.  Self care is like that too. We put aside the laundry until it’s overwhelming. We ignore a health need until uncomfortable. We focus our giving for the holiday without receiving the rest or encouragement we also deserve. Personally, having had a bed in my kitchen yesterday I have a clear visual picture to remind me that in less than 10 minutes a burden became a blessing when it was put in the proper place.

How often do we ignore, postphone, or avoid doing an action that could make our life easier, kinder, and helpful? I don’t know about you, but that seems to be often in mine. When we got back from Sam’s Club it was apparent that it was time to finish the job of moving daughter’s bed into her room. It didn’t get past me that it also required her to move things from her space that no longer had as great a purpose for her in the space as the new to her bed would be. I like the good to great campaigns in life, for they allow us to recognize that we can choose to let good parts of our life go to engage great things.  Her room went from lovely to wonderful as she let go of some things and moved in her Grandmothers bed. It was a long, hard decision for her to do so, for the familiarity of her old space, the unknown parts of “how will I like this” almost kept her from trying something new.

Psst…and trying out the bed in the kitchen, well, it might have had its points, one could imagine breakfast in bed in a whole new way, but personally I think it looks just marvelous in daughter’s space.  Is there something in your life this day that is out of place. Maybe your gift to yourself today will be to take a few moments to recognize that it’s no longer convenient and consider there might be another way!