Feeling our of balance? A little wonky? Holiday headaches, hasty holiday shopping, and hurried housecleaning- we can help.

Monday Morning Inspiration Sometimes, the busyness of the holidays can obscure the joy of celebration and purpose.   When that happens, I go back to my plumb line. Y’all know we have spent 2024 renovating Safe Haven Retreat.  It’s beautiful, and satisfyingly ready for hosting. (Safehavenretreat.life)  We have had much use for a plumb line- crooked trim, crooked walls, and crooked cabinets would not be a good thing.  Crooked lives aren’t good either, but how can we get clear?   Jaycine is facilitating a John C. Maxwell Year-end Review Workshop next Saturday 12/14 on Zoom at 9 am.  It is sure to be a powerful plumb-line activity!   Reviewing what you have done this year, you are applying a plumb line to your life.  You can see if you’re on the path to creating the beautiful kitchen/life/relationship/job you want to have in 2025.  It is a brilliantly aligning practice, applying a plumb line.     Here’s why: When we measure something, we take it against a standard. We take a length or weight that we trust as a standard and compare it to whatever we are trying to quantify or measure. That standard may be a ruler, a scale, or simply a stick. (A bathroom scale is a good measuring tool unless you can shift your weight by leaning on your left foot and have it say you weigh less. Been there, done that. It’s comforting, but it’s not accurate or helpful.) We are by human nature, measurers.   Ideally, our standard is truth, unchanging, and of fixed proportion. A ruler or an accurate bathroom scale could be a good way to measure.   In today’s society, our measure could be an advertisement, Tik Tok, or an Instagram post. It could be our neighbor’s new car or a news story. Those are the blaring measuring sticks of our time.  However, they are neither fixed or truth. Although they are loud, they are not an accurate measure.   Advertisements, social media, and the news are the things that will connect us horizontally. We reach out to those around us- sideways, if you will, and try to connect and find our direction along the sideways lines of our peers and society. With society constantly changing, with new trends and times, there’s not much to count on in the long run.   Sideways, horizontal lines leave us unsettled and often unhappy. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT JAYCINE'S CLASS Enter the plumb line. Have you ever seen one of those? A plumb line is a heavy weight hanging from a chalked string. When it stops swinging and becomes quiet, the string will be precisely and perfectly vertical.   Used by builders through the centuries- as early as the pyramids, plumb lines are accurate because they measure vertically to see if something is “upright” or standing up straight. A plumb line is exact. With it, you can find a perfectly vertical line. The earth’s unchangeable gravity will ensure your line every.single.time. From that perfectly vertical line, you can, with the help of a carpenter’s square, create perfectly horizontal lines as well. You can be sure that your measure is straight and true. You can count on it. Examining our holiday plans and thoughts, are we thinking vertically, like our precise plumb line? Or are we engaging in some funky, horizontal, variable cogitations? Social media can make for some wonky horizontal lines.     Standing there, measuring yourself against a skewed horizontal and changeable line, can create some difficult days.    Let’s shed some light and hope on creating and cultivating vertical thinking: It brings peace.   Check your plumb line, girlfriend!  Make sure you’re not leaning on your left foot on the scale.   Be real and embrace truth.   It will make for a better holiday- and may you find joy in vertical thinking! REGISTER HERE for Year End Review, Whole New You!  All my love, Beth