We are only given one life. God gave me this Blog title before I fell asleep lastnight. Facebook revealed to me this morning, it was 3 years ago today that I wrote my first Blog.

It doesn’t feel like 3 years ago, but looking at my life today it makes sense. I have simplified my life so much, and I’m still doing it today. My daughter and I have this joke about driving, and getting distracted by the sunset. She would be the one arriving home late because she was taking pictures of the sky.

It takes time to unlearn what we’ve learned.

When my daughter and I starting living together on our own, I recall a moment of us getting dressed and ready for the day. She was frantically trying to get ready, and out the door, as I stood there feeling a building pressure of being late again. Then I had a life changing revelation.

I looked her way and said, “We’re not in a hurry.”

After spending most of my life rushing, this was huge. We were not on anyone else’s timetable anymore, so we got to choose how to live our lives. Our lives were pretty much a blank canvas at that point, so we had the opportunity to fill it in as we pleased.

We stopped rushing, and began enjoying our life.

When I see my daughter rushing today, I still tell her, “We’re not in a hurry.” I think I say it outloud for my own sake as well. It’s like a reminder for both of us.

This took years of downsizing, and my flesh having fits because I thought I needed that ginormous house. God gently moved us from one house to the next, each time they got smaller, and we were forced to let go of more things. When my daughter and I moved for the first time into our own little house, that was a defining moment for me.

We only took the things we loved.

There was so much stuff in that house, you couldn’t tell anything was missing when we left. We have moved twice, so we have given away a lot of what we thought we loved. We continue to simplify our lives.

Yesterday, I rearranged the furniture in our den. I woke up this morning excited about walking into a newly designed room. It caused me to take notice of something that has not been used in a while. My daughter’s desk. She has been doing her schoolwork at the dining room table this year, when she has a perfectly good desk. It’s just cluttered up.

To see our lives, and all the opportunity it holds, will take some uncluttering. She has a bookshelf behind her desk that can be made more useful. When she returns home tomorrow, she will have a clean, inviting desk, and a bookshelf housing what she needs.

Enjoy your life. It’s waiting to be seen.