Kate’s Comments (group member since Apr 17, 2015)

Kate’s comments from the The Simplicity Circle group.

I read chapters on clothing, possessions, and media.

The biggest thing I'm thinking about is her attitude of, "Don't just purge, give"

Often we take our knick knacks and worn out shoes to a local goodwill for other wealthy people to score a deal off of. The money is then used for profit or possibly charity. Some stores have a side system to work with the homeless.

The intent changes though when I'm giving clothes to someone I see in need and when I'm just leaving boxes at a warehouse.

If simplifying is meant to change the heart of the matter, than maybe we shouldn't just be getting rid of things, but intentionally giving them to those in need.

After writing this I was reading in Luke where Jesus is talking about serving God and money (Luke 16:10- 13). In verse 11 Jesus says, "Therefore if you have not been faithful in the use of unrighteous wealth , who will entrust true riches to you?"

What do you think?

Favorite quote from the Intro: “A fast is not necessarily something we offer God, but it assists us in offering ourselves”

I am reflecting on Romans 12.

Also for some reason CS Lewis' comments on prayer come to mind, "I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time- waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God- it changes me"

The first chapter on food has me thinking about all of the medical diet things I've tried and how I'm trying to get back to simple nutrition.
I would be interested to try the 7 method when I'm not pregnant.

Food For Thought:

Food is often a hot button: Would you cut down to eating just 7 foods for a month?

How is food a uniting or dividing issue in your immediate or extended family?

What could change in your food life that would improve your relationships with God, family and friends?

Do you fast?

What if the house of your dreams is the home you have? Meet Melissa Michaels, creator of the popular blog The Inspired Room and the best contentment coach you’ll ever meet. With humor and candor Melissa reveals how to transform your rooms (and your life) from plainly livable to fabulously lovable.

Japanese cleaning consultant Marie Kondo takes tidying to a whole new level, promising that if you properly simplify and organize your home once, you’ll never have to do it again. Most methods advocate a room-by-room or little-by-little approach, which doom you to pick away at your piles of stuff forever. The KonMari Method, with its revolutionary category-by-category system, leads to lasting results. In fact, none of Kondo’s clients have lapsed (and she still has a three-month waiting list).

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Combining content from Bread and Wine, Cold Tangerines, and Bittersweet, as well as new writing and recipes, this devotional from Shauna Niequist speaks spiritual truths to women in short passages that invite us to connect with God and the goodness He created all around us.

Bread & Wine is a collection of essays about family relationships, friendships, and the meals that bring us together. Written by well-loved writer and blogger, Shauna Niequist, this is a funny, honest, and vulnerable spiritual memoir about our life around the table---the celebrations, traditions, and experiences that we share, and the ways God teaches and nourishes us as we nourish the people around us.

Have you ever stopped to think, "Maybe the Amish are on to something"? Look around. We tweet while we drive, we talk while we text, and we surf the Internet until we fall asleep. We are essentially plugged in and available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Rather than mastering technology, we have allowed technology to master us. We are an exhausted nation. No one has enough time, everyone feels stressed out, and our kids spend more hours staring at a screen each week than they do playing outside. It's time to simplify our lives, make faith and family the focal point, and recapture the lost art of simple living. Building on the basic principles of Amish life, Nancy Sleeth shows readers how making conscious choices to limit (and in some cases eliminate) technology's hold on our lives and getting back to basics can help us lead calmer, more focused, less harried lives that result in stronger, deeper relationships with our families, friends, and God.

Living Well, Spending Less is Ruth Soukup s first book, following her wildly successful blog of the same name. She gives her readers even more of what they love about the blog: lots of creative, helpful ideas and advice for moms on a budget along with stories from her own journey to discovering what the Good Life is really all about.

How can you have a rich and fulfilling life? The choices you make, not your income or financial assets, are the most powerful determining factor for your quality of life.

Women have never had so many options. Yet we often experience a kind of paralysis, an unconscious willingness to follow societal dictates rather than become the CEOs of our own lives. When we mindlessly follow the dots, we smother our innate gifts and miss opportunities to fulfill our true potential.

There is another way—choosing to live a simply luxurious life. This book will show you how to invest your time and what to eliminate from your life. It will enable you to:

Are you living with the stress of an overwhelmed schedule and aching with the sadness of an underwhelmed soul?

Lysa TerKeurst is learning that there is a big difference between saying yes to everyone and saying yes to God. In "The Best Yes "she will help you: Cure the disease to please with a biblical understanding of the command to love. Escape the guilt of disappointing others by learning the secret of the small no. Overcome the agony of hard choices by embracing a wisdom based decision-making process. Rise above the rush of endless demands and discover your best yes today.

Julie Morgenstern has made a career out of helping her clients get organized. But in the process, she discovered something surprising: for many of her clients, organizing isn’t enough. For those who are eager to make a change in their lives—a new job, a new relationship, a new stage in life— they need to get rid of the old before they can organize the new. They need to SHED their stuff before they can change their lives!
SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life: A Four-Step Guide to Getting Unstuck

All roads lead to home. It's easy to go through life believing that we can satisfy our longing for home with a three-bedroom, two-bath slice of the American dream that we mortgage at 4 percent and pay for over the course of thirty years. But ultimately, in our deepest places, we're really looking to belong and to be known.
Home Is Where My People Are: The Roads That Lead Us to Where We Belong

American life can be excessive, to say the least. That’s what Jen Hatmaker had to admit after taking in hurricane victims who commented on the extravagance of her family’s upper middle class home. She once considered herself unmotivated by the lure of prosperity, but upon being called “rich” by an undeniably poor child, evidence to the contrary mounted, and a social experiment turned spiritual was born.
7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess

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