Before you start your week.

Before you feel like maybe you are the only one who doesn’t have it together. Any of it.

Before you feel the least bit alone as you try to figure out who you are and where you’re going and what you’re doing, remember two things:

Remember there is a lady in the Midwest who has kept her wedding gown in what is essentially a giant white trash bag for 14 years. FOURTEEN. Mere weeks away from fifteen. She hasn’t preserved it for fear it would be ruined. Because, you know, if it were ruined you couldn’t…..couldn’t….couldn’t what? Have it around for random Wednesday nights?! Just in case? This gown has literally been on a couch, bed, shelf or on top of a dresser for nearly one and a half decades. It currently exists on that blue couch. The husband has just now stopped asking when the dress will be cleaned and put away. Just. Now. Like five minutes ago.

Same lady also keeps 82 books on her ‘currently working on’ shelf. Which is actually a filing cabinet full of early 2000’s tax documents that should’ve long since been shredded and is now dressed up with an old Christmas tablecloth. Cause she fancy. She needs to Have a New Kid by Friday, figure out how her many imperfections are a gift, attempt three devotions at once, solve her (and his) marital needs and figure out what happened to the girl on the train. Lord, have mercy.

Same lady has an entire basket of socks that will NOT be matched. They refuse the match. They are single lady crew socks forever, avoiding the match. Lest they be tethered to another sock and start having to read the His Needs, Her Needs Sock Version. Maybe the single lady socks are onto something.

This lady has two busted computers sitting atop the elegant filing cabinet. Cause who knows what to do with old computers? The same brain cells that feed the fear preventing her from cleaning her wedding dress lead her to not throw out an old computer. Because people could get her tax information from 1997. Or hack her MySpace Page. Best those computers stay together under the ‘current reading’ pile. At least they’re matched. Unlike the socks.

You are not alone. Not in your long to-do list, your bucket list or your never ending grocery list. Not in your sitting room/wedding dress storage/book warehouse/laundry area. Not in you’re wrestling with what exactly you’re supposed to be doing this week, this season or this stage of the game.

Second, but most important, remember whose you are. Not who. Whose. A child of God. A God who delights in your idiosyncrasies, oddities, quirks. A God who gets why you can’t quite relinquish control of a dress you wore only once over to the local dry cleaners for fear it will shrink, catch fire, be chemically ruined or disappear. All tragedies resulting in the inevitability that your daughters will not weep at your feet requesting said dress for their own nuptuals one day. He is also a God who knows your needs and dreams and wants. A God who knows your heart, your intentions, your desperate desire to rid your sitting area of two worthless laptop computers by going Office Space style on them with a baseball bat. A God who knows where the matches are to those socks in that sock bin. A God who doesn’t care what best sellers you’ve read but would prefer some one on one time with you. A God who feels the same love and adoration for you as he does Marie Kondo as he does the hoarders on TLC. Same. Love.

Before you start your week feeling less than- less organized, less productive, less well-read, less patient….take a breath and remember! You were created with intention, bought at a price and loved fiercely and immensely. Now, go throw out all those mismatched socks, shelve all but one of those books and for the love of all that is good and right in this world, get the dress cleaned and packed away.