Me, Myself and all My Stuff

Every so often I go through major cleaning binges where my crazy house begins to really make me crazy.  Often I do what I can, give things away and feel better for a little while until it kicks in again.  Recently, I read a wonderful blog post about staging your house to live in.  The timing of this post was just perfect for me because I had been in cleaning mode and frustrated at all the "stuff" we have in our house.  After reading the post I felt so inspired and began really thinking about our house and all our stuff.  The reality that we have a bunch of things that are not family heirlooms, they are not antiques or childhood treasures it is just stuff.  As I looked in a couple boxes in our utility room I was amazed at how many things were random and had been in that room unused for years!  Then I did the unthinkable...I told my husband of my plans to begin working through all our storage areas and garage and cleaning out all this stuff.  His response was what I expected a look of "do not touch my things!"  Seeing this I promised that I would give him ample opportunity to go through all the things of his that I considered in question.

As I have been working through this project, I have realized that as I work on my house the Lord has been working on my heart.  You see we all have stuff that we keep in our hearts and minds just storing it and not letting it go.  Continuing to fill ourselves with the things of the world not always realizing that those things are finding permanent residence in our hearts.  The Lord has taken me back to a study I did called Me, Myself and Lies by Jennifer Rothschild.   She is an amazing speaker and writer who is truly gifted in getting to the heart of things in her teaching.  In this study we looked at our thought closets and how to allow the Lord to sort through the things we were storing there.  We focused on making sure to take the things that were not of the Lord and begin making a conscious effort to remove those thoughts and replace them with scripture and praise.

Through this process the Lord has helped me see numerous things that I am putting my focus in that is hindering my contentment along with my trust and reliance on him.  So I have begun to make some personal changes in my life.  One change is that I made a goal to get off of Facebook for 3 months.  Boy, that was harder than I thought.  I have been amazed at how each time I take a photo my immediate reaction is to post it on Facebook or something funny happens and my brain wants to post it on my page.  Then as I began realizing this the Lord began asking me a hard question...are the posts I am making to Facebook truly out of a desire to share my life or is it out of pride because I want to show off?  That thought hit me like a knife.  Then the Lord began showing me how I have unintentionally been measuring myself and my family by what other people are posting on Facebook.  I would be on there and when I would get off I would be discontent and wishing for all these things that right now are not in the Lord's plan for my families life.

All of these changes were part of the Lord taking our family to exit the freeway of life and go off the beaten path.  He wants us to do things differently.  Have I reached a point where I am not on Facebook at all, honestly no.  The social side of me is struggling to not know what is going on in the lives of my friends, however, I don't want it to continue to be a source of discontent, somewhere to get my daily fill of gossip or a place where I can make sure people know we are trying to keep up with everyone else.  I want it to be a place where the Lord allows me to share my life, my hurt and my struggles with people around me and far away.  But I don't want to hold, I want it to be something that I do every once in a while and not something I find myself wasting time doing.

So, as you can see the Lord has begun to not only help me clean out and organize my house, but he is helping me clean out and organize my heart and mind.

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, 

where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.  

Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  

For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.  

When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

Colossians 3:1-4