After two days of dealing with an intestinal virus I woke up this morning feeling so much better. My first thought was I really need to disinfect this house to prevent anyone else from getting sick. After an hour of cleaning I kept looking at my favorite cabinets in the wall. These cabinets can hold and even hide so much. It is so easy to just put things away so quick and not worry about the "junk" thrown inside. So many times I have guests over and they can see how nice and tidy the house is kept but just the thought of someone opening this clutter trap can quickly cause me to tense up and fear someone seeing I'm not what I tend to show myself to be.
I was fighting myself from just emptying them out and kept thinking I'll wait for the New Year. The New Year is only two days away....and the last day of my vacation. Why wait? I've been waiting and putting it off for over a year now. Last time I cleaned it out, as mentioned in a past blog "Crock Pots and Clutter", I cleaned out some old papers from the school year and vowed to never stuff the papers in there again. This time, I had lots of mail, crinkled up gift bags that I wouldn't dare give away, lots of recycled bags that I keep meaning to bring to the church and lots of trash (broken monitors, UPS boxes with computer components that didn't work, an old blender that would never be used..I really could just go on). So I pretty much put a bandage on it last time, patted it and closed the door.
Like most people, I'm pumped for the New Year. It's a new beginning of restarting many goals such as my Bible reading calendar, getting back on track with working out and a new eating plan (this time gluten free and some Paleo as I'm reading up on it now). I can easily hype myself up and then fall right back into my routine when I realize how busy my life is. Before I know it I'll be back to leading a ladies Bible Study on Monday Nights and Awanas on Tuesday Nights, on Wednesday night I'm getting my dinner done quickly to get my husband and daughter off to youth group. Before I know it, it's Thursday and I'm ready to relax and one of my kids decide to tell me last minute they have a project they need supplies for or they need me to drive them to a friends house or whatever crazy unplanned thing you can think of is needed to be done. Then it's Friday and I realize I never put the load in the wash into the dryer and now I have to re-run it, all this with working full time as a church secretary. So with all this being said, it's easy to put it off for another day.
We have a small narrow kitchen which really doesn't leave alot of room for all the gadgets we've accumulated through the years so sometimes I'll have pans in the food cabinet and mixers in with the plates and somehow my measuring cups disappear FOREVER. If I empty out the huge wall cabinet I would have lots of room. I was ready. My house looked like an explosion went off already with Christmas on Wednesday and then getting sick on Saturday so I was ready to dig deep. I cleaned off the dining room table that already had the Christmas clutter and prepared for the excavation. I just started pulling it all out. I had trash bags filled along the dining room floor. It was all trash. My table was filled with all these organized piles. Pictures in one pile, important financial papers in another, instruction manuals, tax info and prayer cards or special papers like baptism certificates or birth certificates that never got put back in the correct place. Anything else got trashed. Pulling away all the junk revealed my china (I won't really call it fine), our wedding glasses covered in dust, huge serving dishes that just never get used, a large punch bowl, a pasta maker and a pitzel maker. These are all nice things to have but the truth is they aren't really used. So after wiping all the shelves out I put them all to the highest shelf to make room for all the things we can use everyday.
I wanted to do it right though, every object that was put back into the cabinets was wiped, no dust or cob webs. Why put things away dirty? I wiped all the gadgets and put all the chords and parts with all their matching components. My son helped me count all the pieces to all the board games to make sure we weren't putting unusable games away. He even got excited to put all the crafts back in one cubbie. Instead of allowing the multiple cable wires and plugs that belong to some kind of device in the drawers, I refolded the table cloths and put the kitchen towels in the same drawer. Hats, gloves,scarves,umbrellas etc. all went into the other drawer. This is quite a practical cabinet now.
Of course I stared at this masterpiece and really thought about what the Lord was doing with me in this particular project. I fill myself up with all this clutter...usually unneeded and unpleasant clutter. Negative thoughts, opinions about others, feeling bothered and rushed by my children, falling short again on goals, failing health and not always putting Christ first in my life. I have all this space that the Lord gives me. I can fill it with treasures and things I can use to live my daily life to serve Him with joy but I let the clutter get in the way. I'm really not talking about old blenders or circulars from 2012. In the midst of my junk I found an index card that I took into the baptismal pool with me. I ended it with "I live my life with every inhale and every exhale for Jesus Christ". While most of the time this shows itself evident to most people, Christ knows my thoughts and feelings. So it's time to get the junk out, the hidden kind. The junk that makes me sigh when the phone rings as I'm ready to leave the office a half an hour late, or grunt when my daughter needs cover up and hairspray when there is only 5 dollars in the bank account or to leave during work to come pick her up because it's raining and she doesn't want to walk home. Into the trash I could throw out the complaints to my son for not dressing quite the way I wanted him to or that he sounds like a slob when he's eating his dinner. Though some days don't always come out as planned they always come out the way the Lord wants IF I'm fully following Him. Those complaints, sighs and grunts wouldn't happen. So, I'm not waiting for the new year, I don't have to. I'm asking God to fully clean me out so I can only inhale and exhale Christ. New Year's Day is really just another day. But with Christ, everyday is a new day with Him. He will clean me out, wipe all my clutter clean and prepare me to live for Him with lots of room for change.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come:
The old has gone, the new is here!
