I’ve heard a lot lately about flow. People being in the flow, people wanting to be in the flow, how people’s lives have been flowing, and more. And it has made me think about my life. Am I in *a* flow? Is there a flow to my life? So, I’ve been watching.

One thing that I have noticed is that things that are familiar have flow to them. Things that are not familiar to me have low to no flow. I definitely like routine, familiar, easy. For example, I scrub the dishes after dinner. Every night. My kids clear the table, my husband puts away leftovers, kids load the dishwasher, and hubby or kids put the table back together. No one has to be told what to do, we just do it. Routine. Familiar. Easy.

However the other morning I was not in flow with anything. I had decided that I wanted to rearrange my whole upstairs and repurpose three of the four bedrooms. We’ve been talking about it a while and that week it had become a reality. New Year’s Day was when the fun began – the painting of a rather large bedroom. It had taken me quite a while to finally decide on a color – probably because I really was not looking forward to painting. But the decision was made, and it was time to paint. We’ve painted plenty of rooms, never really had a problem painting before, but there was just something about me not wanting to paint. So, we started: there was no flow. It was horrible that first coat. It took us forever, and not fun. I really did not think I was going to be able to finish the coat. But we somehow did. And then this amazing thing happened. We came back to do the second coat with me resigned to try and enjoy it and there was total flow. And I remembered what it was like to paint, and we got in great rhythm and it was great. It became again routine, familiar and easy. My resistance in the morning had made it terrible, and my decision to go with the flow created a flow. Wow.

This made me think about other things that I have been in the flow about before that I am not right now…exercise, healthy eating, bible study, crafting, reading, my businesses, etc. Right now I have a stinky poo-poo attitude and resistance about so many of them because right now they are not routine, familiar or easy. But as evidenced by a day of painting, if I can just resign myself to going with the flow, my flow will be found.