Simplify and Get Over Yourself

To simplify something is to make it less complex and easier to understand.

When you simplify, you make things clearer.

Since simple things have less parts or complexity, when you simplify, you're eliminating the clutter and reducing something to its essence.

This year God has laid the word "Simplify" onto my heart.

When New Years rolls around, our televisions are lit up with weight loss fads, our newsfeeds are filled with financial plans, our entire January filled with hopeful life goals.

"I want to lose weight."
"I want to buy a house."
"I want to stop smoking."

These are all great, but while many of my peers are jumping into a large pool of resolutions I am wading in the shallow end of life's simplicities.

This year I will be still.
This year I will listen more than speak.
This year I will glide not gloat.
This year I will worry about my expanding influence on others, not my shrinking waist line.
This year I will shy from spotlights and aim to honor others in their successes.

I will simplify by stripping myself of "me me me" and putting on the cloak of "not me, but You."

I do not need a number on the scale, a new wardrobe, a new job, a new financial plan, a new house, a new car, a new "me."

What I need is to get over myself this year.

Seriously.

Do I want my year to end with only a new body to show?
Or more money in my pocket?

I want my year to end with a heart empty from pouring out all the muck of me, left in a simple and pure state.

This year I will donate clothes, not buy them.
This year I will be concerned with the food I serve to others, not to my already full belly.
This year I will trade pedicures for washing another's feet.
This year I will de-clutter my mind, my spirit, my closet of all the fleshly things I tend to grasp onto all too tightly.

I possess a lot of things emotionally and physically that are only taking up space.

Those shoes that I never wear, but a girl on the street would love to have.

That bitterness that isn't making enough room for all the love my heart could hold.

May I end 2014 with less of myself than when it began.


Sometimes, less is more.

Sometimes, you just need to simplify.

Sometimes you need to get the heck over yourself.