seeingthe mess
I’ve mentioned before that I do a daily devotional with a few friends. This week’s topic has been healing hurts. In the study a few days ago, there was a comparison made to spring cleaning and clearing out the remnant protective behaviors we tend to wrap ourselves in when we are hurting.
It was interesting timing (I won’t say coincidental, usually God’s nudges aren’t coincidental). I had just started the process of deep cleaning our bedroom. Through a combination of a general dislike of cleaning and the total flip to anything resembling a normal routine during the last year and a half, it was way past due.
That’s not to say we hadn’t cleaned it at all over the last 18 months, just not really. We had cleaned “at it.” Moved things around, organized a pile into another pile, taken out obvious garbage, but there was so much that hadn’t been dealt with. As I proceeded to move furniture to really get under it, take down curtain rods with an incredible amount of dust piled on top of them, and generally dive into the corners and crevices of my bedroom, the comparison of the devotional came to mind. There were remnants of dirt and debris in my bedroom, what about remnants of hurt and unforgiveness in my heart?
deep cleaning
Taking a hard look at my heart, I had to realize the same was true. Over the course of the last two years, I have cleaned “at it” but maybe not deep cleaned. I had thrown some obvious resentment and hurt out, but had often just reshuffled and re-piled the junk I didn’t want to deal with. Hurts had settled like dust in the hard to reach places, unforgiveness got swept under the furniture, not obviously visible, but still enough to impact the air quality of the space.
As I cleaned my room and found myself looking at things I was pretty sure I had previously evicted from this space, I realized, there are things camping out in my heart that I had also previously removed. But just as the objects in my home, if not removed completely, have a way of turning back up, so had my hurts and fears. As I finished deep cleaning my room, dusting all the hidden corners, taking out garbage, cleaning the windows, and filling bags to donate, I am left with one tub of items that I’m not sure what to do with. Donate, sell, garbage. It’s that tub of miscellaneous stuff that I know I don’t need any more, but at one point had value and it seems a shame to just throw it away, and so even now, as the rest of my room has been cleaned, it sits in a corner.
Clearing out the Junk
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I acknowledge I still have some work to do. How about you? I have spoken forgiveness, I have given hurts and disappointments to God, I have cleaned at my heart. But it’s been a while since I deep cleaned. Since I moved all the furniture and climbed up the hard to reach places. It’s been a while since I truly looked into the corners I didn’t want to look into, and somewhere in the mess, I know there is a tub of things I haven’t gotten rid of yet. The things I know I don’t need anymore, the things God has already replaced with newer and better, and yet because they once had value, I am struggling to let them go.
So this week, I commit to finishing my deep clean. Both in my bedroom and in my heart. I’ll walk with Jesus into dark and scary corners, and I’ll hand over the tub of things and trust that He knows what to do with them. I’ll speak forgiveness again over the events and people who have found their way back into this space and I will not shuffle around piles, but rather tackle them head on.
How about you? Will you join me? I know it’s not easy, there are parts that feel so hard, and yet I know it’s worth it. Here’s to brighter spaces and better air quality for all of us.
