Get Rid of Excess

"Surrendering all the excesses so we can more fully serve the Lord is foundational to the work we do in our homes."
The Heart of Simplicity introduction by Courtney Dunkin

That's it.  I didn't realize it but my life is full of excesses. 
I have extra stuff I don't need.  I eat extra food I don't need.  I live with excesses.
The excesses begin to burden and distract me.
My desire is to live a life fully and completely committed to Christ.  I don't want anything to get in the way.  I desire to walk in the Spirit (Romans 8:4, Galatians 5:16) and ask Him to open my eyes to see things as He sees them and to move my feet to walk as He directs.

However, all these excesses really tie my heart to the temporal world. 

I love books.  (What homeschooling mom doesn't?)  ;)  But all the excess is not good stewardship and the burden that comes from more stuff than I need (books & other things) distracts me.  (It is distracting/frustrating to not know where I'm going to place this new treasure because our bookshelves are full of other treasures.  It's a blessing, but one I need to control rather than having it control me.)  Often I focus on the feelings of frustration rather than living my life in the Spirit with His fruit evident in my words and actions.  (It's hard to be peaceful and joyful when feeling frustrated by the stuff and that frustration is compounded by my lack of discipline.

Likewise, food can be a struggle for me.  (I didn't really realize this for a long time.)  Sometimes I'm wanting what I want when I want it regardless of if I'm hungry, which moves food from the category of a gift from God to fulfill a need to the category of simply a way to meet my desires and make me happy.  This takes my focus off God (the Giver) and places it directly on me and what I want.  I allow my desires (my flesh) to rule over me rather than me ruling over it.

I also sometimes struggle over the other end of the spectrum.  After being diagnosed with high cholesterol, I knew I wanted to avoid medication and wanted to find a way to naturally change those numbers.  This put my focus on food, but in a different way.  Now it put food, health, and research at the foremost of my thoughts.  While I know that taking care of our health is often a matter of stewardship (and discipline) and it's good to be informed and make intentional choices, I also sensed the Holy Spirit showing me that I was starting to act as if I were the one in control and as if everything depended on me.  (Inflated sense of self and focus on self is never a good thing.)  It also increased my fear over bad health and was putting my focus on temporal things, rather than eternal.

In 100 years, I'll be in heaven praising Jesus.  Things I've done on earth with eternal purposes will matter.  Things I've done with temporal purposes won't.  So, while I need to take care of things with temporal purposes (stewardship of health, cleaning house, feeding my family, getting the brakes checked on the car, etc.), my focus must be on Christ and walking with Him as He leads. 

I need to simplify my life to decrease the clutter (physical, emotional, spiritual) so that I won't be distracted from hearing Him.  I need to get rid of excesses.  Those areas of excess often exhibit control over me.  I desire to have nothing control me but God.