Beauty and refreshment go hand in hand. Take into consideration the art, training, and precision that goes into making a mocha at a coffee shop. What makes it special is so much more than just a sweet sip of java. The correct ingredients must be mixed at the appropriate temperature with the correct tools to make the frothy milk enhance it into a refreshing experience rather than just a drink.
I chose the word refresh to kick off my year of RE. It seemed like an appropriate word to start off the year strong as I took on the list of goals I’d made for myself. Besides, refresh is a word that sounds ever so appealing. There’s nothing more promising than a fresh start after all.
I was like the stereotypical child at Christmas with the promise of what would come with feeling refreshed. I had never before considered that the feeling of refreshment is the product of the challenging work of doing the refreshing. Still oblivious to this fact, I hit the ground running with all of the necessary actions associated with refreshing, and I learned rather quickly that this word I’d never really pondered before is an exhausting endeavor to achieve. Here are some facts I learned through the personal challenge to bring about refreshing in my life.
- Refreshing requires moving when I’d rather sit. It means planning and organizing the fragments that surround my current state of living into a format that breathes order and hope. I can’t sit and enjoy an organized home without the work of combing through all that I have, evaluating whether or not it still needed to live where I’d left it.
- Refreshing takes a creative idea and expects me to eek out as much effort into accomplishing it as possible. I value creativity a great deal, but I must admit that choosing to incorporate creativity into life means being willing to critically analyze all aspects of what I’m planning and not being satisfied until I have reached the best version. This requires one of the toughest truths regarding refreshing:
- Refreshing means that I must confront realities I’ve been working hard to ignore, and taking what I’ve had all along to turn it into the best that it can be. Sometimes I want to believe that I need something new in order to achieve refreshment when I actually need to accept what I have is enough, it just needs a fresh perspective and revision.
In just a few weeks, my respect for refreshing has grown immensely. I will no longer take lightly the experiences from which I walk away feeling refreshed because that means someone worked diligently to create that experience. Above all, I’m challenged to remember that the person who should be doing the most work to make my life orderly enough to enjoy the beauty of personal refreshment is me.