JUNK DRAWERS

So here we are… the last week in January.   How many drawers have you cleaned??  How many closets have you reorganized??  It seems to be an instinctive need we have at the beginning of a new year to “clean house”.   Retailers are well aware of this tendency and market their organizers, plastic tubs, and books.   Endless strategies are offered in book stores, on t.v., and online.

Getting rid of junk feels good, doesn’t it.  Sometimes the messiest spots are the hardest to tackle though.  I’ve opened junk drawers like that, took one look, and simply closed them again!!  The task seemed too daunting….  maybe later.

I cleaned house last week.  Not my house in the literal sense, but instead… I cleaned “MY house”.    I asked God through an very extended, focused prayer time to expose to my mind and heart any area in my life that needed to be hauled out, gone through, evaluated, and/or eliminated.  Some of what I found in those deep, dark closets surprised me.  Like finding an old sweater from high school that you didn’t even remember you still had possession of… or discovering a grade school artifact that you had totally forgotten about.   These things were part of your life.  They represent the person you were.  They played a role in who you became. 

While high school fashion may make you laugh and grade school art may bring a smile to your face…. not everything you find in the deep dark corners of your heart will.  But opening those places and then just shutting the door to them again because the task is too daunting won’t make them go away.  They’ll still be there…. collecting even more and more dust. 

God brought things to my mind from way back when.  Silly things, I had thought… but when I hauled them all out and laid them side-by-side, I could see the pattern that God wanted to reveal to me.  Patterns, that unbenounced to me, had played an important role in who I am today. It was good at that point to literally ask God to go back into those situations with me.   It was amazing how in those “corners” where I was crying, I saw Him crying beside me.  In the “drawers” I opened where I felt ashamed or laughed at, He revealed Himself as having been there with His arms open wide saying “You are mine”.  And in those “closets” that exposed times where I felt rejected, I saw Him smiling at me, saying “Sandy... I CHOSE you”.

It’s a good feeling to have a clean house, isn’t it.  But, I wish there was a way to keep those freshly cleaned LITERAL drawers and reorganized LITERAL closets clean.  To the best of my knowledge, there isn’t any full proof product or strategy on the market as of yet.  Eventually, they will become disorganized and messy once again.   

   

The GOOD NEWS is there IS a way to protect our spiritual and personal house.   And it’s part of the cleaning process that I had missed before.  After hauling things out, sorting through them, dumping the crap, and at times handing over treasures… I asked the Holy Spirit to literally move into those places inside me that were now left exposed.  I asked Him to FILL THEM so those spaces were now occupied, and that particular junk could never return to them.  Of course they’re always be new junk to contend with, but those old spots are now FILLED… and sealed off forever… with the Holy Spirit.   I’ve never in my life felt cleaner... and can honestly say I've never felt closer to God.

 

I have to admit that it makes me grin how all this happened in January… the month notorious for cleaning house.  Ha!!!  Our God is SO awesome, isn’t He. 

Thank you, God… I love you too.