I wear a lot of t-shirts. Crewneck, layering, long (or short) sleeved t-shirts. Because (1) I don’t leave the house all that often, (2) I have a tendency to spill things on myself (just ask my brother), and (3) what I don’t spill on myself, one of my four preschoolers does.

But anyway, I wear mostly t-shirts. And I noticed, back at the end of the summer, that about half of my shirts had a hole in the front, all in the same place, all in various stages of hole-ish-ness. Weird, I thought.

Of course, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that that spot, in every single shirt, was the place where the shirt rubbed across the top corner of my jeans, just above the button. That corner juts out just a bit, and as I move all day, it rubbed against my shirts. Over time…voila! Those holes.

And here, in the last week of January. Here, in the middle of the coldest winter Ohio has seen in years. Here, in the middle of a weekend snowstorm. Here, stuck inside our small temporary housing, smashed up against the smallness of the mundane and the repetitiveness of a house full of small ones. Here, I, too, am threadbare.

It’s the season: the weather, the cold, the driveway too steep to drive out of sometimes. It’s the children: their messes, their tantrums, their bickering and whining and neediness. It’s the house: its size, its lack of “dream home” appeal, its refusal to stay clean no matter how many times I pick things up. They rub against me. They jut into me, and they rub until I am threadbare, until the tiniest of holes begins to show, until the hole is a massive chasm.

And threadbare is unpleasant. Because those holes? They reveal the yuck inside me. My selfishness, anger, self-pity, discouragement — they are visible through those holes. More accurately, they escape through those holes. I am unpleasant. I nurse grudges against my husband, my kids, my mom, the world at large. I am unkind. I speak angry words. I yell at my kids. I huff and roll my eyes at yet another interruption.

I am threadbare.

And I cannot stop the rubbing. That is the season, of the year, of my life, that I am in. That is the reality of “I do” spoken almost 10 years ago. That is the cost of moving, of loneliness, of lacking clear purpose and design. The rubbing is life.

But, this week, I accepted a new reality…I can do one thing. Just ONE thing. I can choose. I cannot fix things, change the weather, change my circumstances. I cannot make myself be different. I cannot organize or control it away. I cannot lose myself far enough into Facebook or Pinterest.

But I can make a choice.

Because long ago, in a garden, God gave mankind the ability to choose. And He never took it away. Even after the sin. Even after the fall. Even after the separation and the thousands of years of human beings rubbing against each other and spilling out their mess into each other’s lives. Even after all of that, because He died, because He rose again, there is still A CHOICE.

Because of Jesus, I can choose. I can exercise my will towards a different path. I do not feel like it. Not even a little bit. I want to nurse the grudge. I want to wallow. I want to yell and complain and pick fights and blame others for…well, everything.

But instead, I will choose. Because maybe, just maybe, when I choose Him, those holes become more. I want them gone. But He has a different plan. Instead of healing them, making them disappear so that I can appear unfazed by my life, He makes them the openings through which He can pour out. Onto my family. Onto my home. Onto my life. Onto my own selfish heart.

And then, when He pours out, I will discover joy. Joy that will be my strength.

So, threadbare though I am – in winter, with small kids, in a house I don’t dream of, without clear answers or new inspirations – I will still choose. Some days, I will choose poorly. I will choose squalor and self-pity. But slowly, one choice, one day at a time, I will seek from Him the discipline to choose Him and let him change my threadbare into a thin veil from which, through which, He can change me. And through me, maybe even a whole world.

Let’s be honest, in a house filled with 4 preschoolers, most of our conversations are, um, less than deep. These days, we’re having a lot of discussions about Toy Story, poop, Ice Age, our new chore charts, Alex’s imaginary world, who-did-what-to-whom, and more poop.

So, when those rare moments of clarity hit, they tend to stand out, pleasantly surprising us that a deep thought can still slip off our tongues. But it does happen. Here are my recent favorites:

1. The other day, Eric and I were talking as we drove (almost late) to church. In the middle of the conversation, he noted, “If you let your mind go down a road long enough, you can choose to do anything.”

2. Timmy’s current rate of high mobility requires one or two key gates. The most important one being across the kitchen. So, the 5+ foot doorway is now restricted to a not-even 2 foot opening. And needless to say, there’s a lot of traffic through it.

So, as I was scooting around one of the girls for the Lord-knows-how-many-th time, I said, “Move please. When there’s a narrow gate, you can’t stand in front of it. You have to get out of the way.”

See, aren’t we just profound? 🙂

Today, I finally return to a live blog. As noted by the tagline, my wonderful husband migrated all my old files, first from Xanga to our backup drive (a couple of months ago), and then from the backup to an actual website that people (like you!) can read. Not surprisingly, it’s been hard to be disciplined to write anything on a blog that wasn’t “live,” so I’m very happy to be back, sending out my musings for anyone else who wants a look into my screwy little brain!

It’s also January. Of course, the holidays were busy. And it was really, really, REALLY great to have Eric off work for almost two full weeks. But now I’m ready for a return to normal. It’s more than just being done with a crazy schedule. And it’s more than wanting to get back to a routine (we’d have to have one to return to it!).

Really, I’m trying to return to…discipline. For me and for my kids. I’ve spent months excusing my crazy because Timmy was still so small and because we’d moved and because I was (am) still looking for a sense of how I fit here. But Timmy is one and now weaning, and that’s going to allow a whole new flexibility for us. And the move is pretty well behind us now. Yes, we’re making things better (as much as possible) and we’re planning for building a new house (hopefully soon). But for now, we’re here and that’s that.

So really, I’m ready to find my way back to doing the hard work of choosing what isn’t easy simply because it is better. I’m needing to put aside my selfishness to bless my kids and husband. I’m starting to thirst, just a bit, for purpose in my use of money, my time, my things. I’m aching, just a bit, to feel less like I’m reacting to everything and more like I’m consciously asserting order (cosmos out of chaos, as Madeleine L’Engle describes). I’m no longer okay with excusing myself from exercise and Bible study and prayer time because “I don’t have time.” In truth, I do have time. I just haven’t had the discipline to intentionally re-insert those things into my days. And I need them back.

So, it’s time. Time to return. Not to earn favor (I’m trying to learn grace). Not to create a sense of control (though I to love that feeling). Not to craft some Pinterest-able life to make everyone else wish they were me (trust me…you SO do not want to be me!) No, I need the return because in drilling back down to the basics, making little choices repeatedly — knowing they will result in big differences, searching for God not somewhere and someday but right here and right now…in all those things is the only path towards Joy and Jesus and Purpose and Peace.

It’s time to return.