What water are you drinking?
Sometimes it’s the small things that can have a profound impact on our daily lives.
In our busy lives, it is hard to spot a persistent, pervasive problem, especially if it’s causing increasingly more work and stress. But thankfully, God helps us and gives us understanding, both for the problems in our daily lives and for the more important spiritual lessons we should be learning.
Himmit and I are not wealthy in the eyes of the world, so we do our best in whatever situation we find ourselves. When we moved into the place we are now, we immediately began to have strange physical problems. We would be thirsty no matter how much water we drank. I would crave frozen anything (especially watery popsicles and ice), as long as it wasn’t homemade. We didn’t feel well, so the to-do list sat gathering dust many times. The houseplants were dying. We wondered at the problem. I believe God helped us figure out that our water had a lot of minerals, which were building up in our bodies and drying us out, so to speak. So, we invested in a Zen water filter, and everything became better.
Several years later, all of the houseplants began to die and we began to not feel so well. We suspected that fluoride was added to the water supply. In addition, the city where we live kept having accidents that prompted boil water advisories. We couldn’t afford distilled water very much, and “coincidentally”, at the same time the water changed, the stores began to ration distilled water. We prayed about it, and God mercifully provided for us to be able to invest in a Durastill distiller – USA made (which was already in our homesteading plan/budget). We run the distilled water back through the filter to add in minerals (don’t drink distilled all the time – you need some minerals, just not enough to paint a chalkboard with!) Not only are we and the houseplants feeling fine, but the tea and coffee has never tasted better!
What does this have to do with homemaking? It can be difficult in our busy lives to see the small, persistent thing that affects us everyday, like water. Your problem could be a routine/schedule/goal clash that causes friction. Or maybe you should cut back on that coffee (it has a dehydrating effect, by the way). If you find yourself moving certain items daily or weekly, perhaps the place for that thing should be elsewhere. Does a certain task hang over your mind like a cloud until it is done? Is there any way to do it earlier or break it up into smaller task portions? These are all suggestions from my own experience.
There is no perfection or medal in homemaking. There are hard days, and limitations no matter where you find yourself. But just like those sliding puzzles with the one spot missing (see picture), one move leads to another little space. Sometimes the smallest changes can have the biggest impact.
In the same way that thorns and bad water can work their way into our homemaking and everyday lives, bad influences can creep into our spiritual lives as well. Do we try to drink subpar water in our spiritual lives instead of drinking of the Living Water? How did that happen? Do you keep telling yourself that you’ll pray later, or read later? Do you feel like you’ve been partaking of convenient food and soda in your everyday and spiritual life, instead of nourishing yourself with healthy habits and the Living Word and Water? Have you noticed how much more peace you have when you make more of an effort to spend time alone with God, reading HIS Word and praying? Your spiritual life is very important, and even if you don’t see it now, it does indeed affect your everyday life in front of you. Habits and changes don’t happen automatically. They build over time. Just try. Even a little bit is something more and different than you did before!
Ask HIM to make you teachable, to show you what items in your life need to be dealt with at this time. Ask HIM to help you with the lessons HE wants you to be learning.
John 6.35 “And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst.”
John 4.13 “Jesus answered and said to her, “Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.”
John 7.37 “On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” 39 But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those [g]believing in Him would receive; for the [h]Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”
Song: "Mayim Chayim" by Zemer Levav
Shalom!
