Inspiration Comes from Cleaning

Before anyone who knows me well has a heart attack, thinking that aliens must have taken over my body if I found inspiration in doing something I dislike (cleaning), let me put your mind at ease.

My much-neater husband took the opportunity of a day off last Friday to do some "spring" cleaning, and I felt a little guilty, so I cleaned out a few drawers.

What I found amazed me.

It is a slightly wrinkled print that was in an envelope. I don't remember receiving it as a gift, or purchasing it, or even putting it in that drawer sometime in the last 11 years that we have lived here.

The message of the print sounds like me, so much that I've put it here, over my computer, to uplift me as I begin grad school next week.

Here it is, a picture, then the words:

"she lives

she dances.
she sings.
she takes, she gives.
she serves.
she loves and creates.
she dissents, she enlivens.
she sees.
she grows.
she sweats.
she changes.
she learns.
she laughs.
she sheds
her skin.
she bleeds on the
pages of her days.
she walks through walls.
she lives
with intention.
--- mary anne radmacher

I cannot tell you how much I love this. If someone in my life knows where this came from, great! If not, the mystery will continue, and I am not bothered by that. No matter when I got/purchased this, it is seems like a message from above. It is pushing me forward, toward a new career, toward a new, more healthy me, toward what God has planned for me.

It will serve as a reminder, on those days when I am struggling with making myself work out, or finish an assignment for school, or just get up out of bed when I'd rather stay warm under the covers, that I am living with intention. I am shedding my skin. And I am doing so with joy.