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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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3 Ways to Create a Peaceful Home during a Tense Season

Jul 5 46 Comments

I don’t want to have just a tidy home, a pretty home, a cozy home, a functional home — I want to have a peaceful home. Being a new parent isn’t exactly the most peaceful season of life, though, so I’m having to work extra hard to create an atmosphere of peace, to make my home into a refuge for myself and for Dan and for the people we welcome into it.

I’ve been a bit on edge recently —  having a needy, whiny, teething (and somehow, still darling) little baby around all the time will do that to you, along with never getting quite enough sleep. Even when she sleeps through the night, I don’t.

Also, Selah is starting to have separation anxiety even when I’m home. She doesn’t want to be put down for even a minute, so I let her cry while I pee, and then I go back to carting her around the house on my hip or in the wrap, or letting her sit in my lap while I hold her hands back with one of mine and try to type with the other. (Working from home is getting increasingly complicated.)

By the end of the day, my nerves are taut and my mind is mush and my tone is clipped. And we all feel it.

3 ways to create a peaceful home FB

 

A few weeks ago I asked Dan, “Do I make you walk on eggshells?” to which he said, “No, but you have been a little . . . testy.” Which means he probably wanted to say yes but couldn’t, because of the aforementioned eggshells.

It’s never my intention to generate tension, but lately it seems to seep out of me.

It’s in light of a recent good day — a day when I did get enough sleep and didn’t feel exhausted — that I realized what a profound impact my attitude has on the atmosphere of my home. It’s almost as if the people and the walls absorb my excess and then bleed it back out.

It’s a lot of pressure to be the one in charge of setting the tone of my home. Do I have to be happy-clappy, ever patient, never cracking or snapping? Am I, as wife and mom, the only one responsible for setting the tone of our home? No and no.

Each person who lives here contributes to the atmosphere, but the only one I can control is me.

While creating peace in my home doesn’t end with me, it can certainly start with me. Here are some ways I’m trying to create an atmosphere that’s a little more puffed up with peace and patience and not so weighed down by stress and tension.

I don’t want to have just a tidy home, a pretty home, a cozy home, a functional home — I want to have a peaceful home. I’m intentionally trying to create an atmosphere that’s a little more puffed up with peace and patience and not so weighed down by stress and tension, even though this season of life is pretty chaotic.

Lean in to my feelings.

One of the things I’m learning lately is that feeling my feelings — the good, the bad, and the ugly — is always okay. I don’t have to swallow the negative or stuff it away. In fact, I think the only way for me to get to the other side of impatience or frustration or exhaustion or grief is to feel the feeling and act on it but not from it. Instead of sensing the frustration and snapping, I’m trying to feel the frustration, find it’s source, and take a step back to address that.

Feel your feelings, but act ON them, not FROM them + 2 more ways to create a peaceful #home. Click To Tweet

For example, Selah whined for a solid two hours one day last week, and when Dan came home and teased me lightheartedly about something unrelated, my nerves were so frazzled that I almost lost it. So I felt my visceral reaction; told him gently that even though I knew he meant no harm, I wasn’t in the mood for jokes; asked him to take Selah for a few minutes; and laid down and closed my eyes. It took all of 10 minutes and a giving up of my usual desire to just muscle through, but this self-care saved us an argument and a night of gritted teeth.

Recognize physical triggers.

I’m getting better at recognizing my emotional triggers, but somehow I still manage to forget about the physical ones. Or really, I’m sometimes too tired to address the physical ones. I don’t put Selah’s toys away when we’re done playing, I let the dishes pile up when I work from home, and I always get through the process of folding the laundry and then can’t bring myself to put it away. All these little things add up to one disorderly house and one rattled mind over the course of just a few hours.

I’m trying to return to my basics, the habits I was so good about before I had Selah — tidying as I go, wiping surfaces, taking five minutes to fold the blankets and fluff the pillows. When I do, I actually notice a change in how much I like my house and how content and calm I feel.

Pray often.

I rarely have time to sit down and write out my prayers in my journal the way I used to. Sometimes this makes me feel like a failure, but I know that God doesn’t require my prayers to be written, to be long, or even to be well thought out. He wants to hear my needs moment by moment, unpolished, especially when I’m hanging by a thread.

When I’m up to my eyeballs in poopy diapers or rocking a crying baby in my arms, I can’t take ten minutes to process with God through my journal writing. I have about ten seconds to whisper my desperate plea for one more drop of strength, for one extra measure of grace. And you know what? He still hears me.

So often I try to rely on sheer will, mental muscle, and positive self-talk to power through tough moments. I’m a mom! I’m a woman! I am capable and strong and in control! I do believe in the power of positive self-talk, but I’m learning (for about the ninety-seventh time in my life) that I’m none of those things on my own, and only by asking for the Lord’s help will I be the woman I want to be, will I be able to reflect his character to my family.

So I lift my prayers — prayers that can be prayed in a single breath — up to the Lord, knowing he hears and will give me what I need for this moment. I tend to want a ten-year supply of patience, peace, and grace, but I’m learning to be content with my daily bread, and more often, just the bread I need for each singular moment. He is my portion every minute of every day, and he isn’t going anywhere. I don’t need to store up provisions when I have a trustworthy, steadfast God who hears me always.

//

I’m sure I can’t be the only one who struggles to create peace when my inner life feels chaotic. I’m sure I can’t be the only one who sets her whole family on edge when she can’t take even one more moment of noise, one more whine, one more touch before I am all touched out and ready to snap. I’m sure I can’t be the only one who believes this matters but struggles to put it into practice.

Pumping our homes full of peace matters. It matters for our own sanity and for the health of the people who live with us. It matters because I want to welcome others into a home that is soaked through with peace when it’s at rest, not just glazed with peace when others enter in.

What do you do? What kind of atmosphere are you trying to create in your home? What are your practices for intentionally creating the atmosphere you envision?

3 ways to create a #peaceful home in the midst of a tense season. #intentionalliving #home Click To Tweet

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Filed Under: Relationships, Simple Living & Minimalism Tagged With: choices, faith, God, habits, home, intention, motherhood, relationships, simple living

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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