Mae - Having a Martha home the Mary way: 31 days to a clean house and a satisfied soul

THIS BOOK IS HOW I met my best friend. Shes the one who wrote it, but five years ago when she released pieces of it as a bit of a pamphlet e-book, I read it for no real reason other than I needed to do something. Cleaning my house was one of the somethings.

Youve been there, right? My guess is youre there RIGHT NOW since youre holding these pages this very minute. Among the things bidding for my attention at that time in my own life was a request from our church to lead a womens Bible study group. I was in a bit of a dry season, which led me to a really deep conversation with myself that went something like this:

Im feeling uninspired right now, and my house is a wrecka wreck, I tell you! But if I lead a study on cleaning, then Ill actually be forced to follow through with it. Those who lead are forced to do.

If there were a prize for superspiritual reasons for doing things, I would absolutely not have even made it through a preliminary round. But since they asked, and since a friend of mine told me about Sarahs project 31 Days to Clean, I submitted the class proposal and ordered the book afterward. Uninspired people often dont do their homework.

When I actually downloaded the e-book, I realized that my best-laid plan needed to be adjusted something fierce. I didnt know that e-books are typically not nearly as long as standard printed books, and here Id just signed up to lead a fourteen-week study. The title alone31 Days to Cleanshould have tipped me off that I would come up short on material if Id actually bothered to do the math. But then again, pertinent things like timing and preplanning werent exactly on my unmotivated radar.

I freaked out for a day and then figured that since I wasnt inspired, maybe if I asked the Lord, Hed give me a nugget to fill up the rest of the time.

And He did.

I used parts of Sarah Maes e-book in conjunction with some of my own Bible study on the why behind the Mary and Martha challenges, and something incredible happened in that group.

Women were changed.

What began as a kick in the pants to do the laundry and wipe down the baseboards turned into a refocusing of a roomful of women who had all lost their way somewhere in the midst of the mundane. The instructions they were reading werent just a call to action to ruthless purging in hopes of seeing the floor of their closets againthey were an invitation to explore the why and the how together.

I remember thinking to myself in the midst of that study, If I ever wrote a book and it changed people, Id sure want to know.

So even though I didnt know her personally, I e-mailed Sarah Mae just to tell her... to encourage her... and to let her know that somewhere in the midst of cleaning closets and writing mission statements, a whole group of women unlocked passions for their homes and families and friends parts of their lives that had collected some cobwebs over the years.

I never expected to hear back from her, but the Lord had plans for this woman and me, and He used this book to start them.

What began as a project to get her own heart in order has now turned into this full book. Over the past several years, Sarah has fine-tuned the projects, missions, and motivations within these pages. She has dug deeper in her soul, and the Lord has unlocked new content that I believe will move you into the experience I had with those women years ago. Its time to get going, girlsgrab a friend, grab a hand, and grab a mopweve got some tidying up to do. We may start clearing off counters and floors, but in the end, I think what we will find is rearranged hearts.