Yesterday marked the first day of a new school year in my area; hopefully a fresh start and an opportunity for new beginnings. 

Sometimes this new start is celebratory and exciting. Ideally, students are coming in with a “blank slate”, ready to seize the opportunities in front of them. Hopefully, the experience is positive. Maybe the students excel scholastically or athletically, are naturally “popular” or walk through life with what appears to be a golden road laid out before them. They might even go to school that first-day wearing new clothing, shoes, backpacks.

But, sometimes it’s downright earth-shatteringly scary. The slate is anything but blank. It’s pock-marked and battle weary. It holds negative words and phrases that can’t be erased. These children may dread this day believing they don’t fit in, or they’re not smart (or good) enough. Maybe their families don’t have the resources to arm them with the “look of the year”, and they’re using backpacks that have held many years of books and wearing sneakers that are already too small.

For some, newness creates freedom. For others, newness creates fear.

Homes and relationships are a lot like a new school year.

When you start out—whether in marriage, partnership, cohabitation or in a new home you, hopefully, enter with the excitement of a new beginning. You put your best foot forward. You’re careful about what you say, and how you say it. You listen intently to what’s being said. You pay attention to “the little things” while navigating through the hallways of this new “school”.

Over time, life may get a bit less “new and shiny”. 

Maybe:
•your pencils aren’t as sharp as you wish they were, so you give up trying to express yourself.
•your lockers are jammed with so much stuff that you never see what you actually need, use or love.
•you always throw on old, worn-out clothing, thinking, “it doesn’t matter how I look; I’m never ”seen”.
•you decide not to even try to join the “lunch table” because no one there talks to you.
•you don’t finish something you intended to do because “it’s just another job on my endless list”.
•you give up altogether because you’re never going to make the grade, so you decide, “why bother at all?”
• the ways you’ve tried to “fit in” are so out of sync with your spirit that, in spite of thinking that you’d find happiness being “that” person, you’re not Who You Really Are.

What if we could figure out how to make our homes, our relationships and ourselves fresh and new?

What if you:
clean out your proverbial locker so that you actually see what you have in there?
get rid of all the junk in your folders?
decide that you are worth wearing something you feel good in?
decide you can sit at any table you want?
decide to make a fresh start?

So…..pick a day between now and the first day of autumn (9/23) to have your “first day”.
Start over.
What will you get rid of and what will remain from your current life?
How will you live in your home differently?
How will you treat the people in your life differently?
How will you approach each day if you always start with a blank slate?
kay

©2019 kay mclane, peace full home®/intentional living

Blog: peacefullhome.com
Twitter: @kaymclane
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Facebook: facebook.com/kayspeacefullhome

What colors will you use to create your new day?