Waste Management

 

Minors to the Majors

After having to sort through over 10,000 emails recently, I got to thinking about how easily items that should be trashed can accumulate. Why did I hang on to emails that I never intended to read, never unsubscribed to things that no longer interested me? Mainly because I failed to daily attend to that minor task, and they soon snowball into major headaches. We tend to fill our lives to the max and fail to leave margins. It wasn't until Google sent an alarming email that I woke up to the sorry state of my inbox.  I was hanging onto worthless emails and jeopardizing my ability to have room for more important things.  Everything has its limits.

Stuffed to the Max

I have also struggled with overstuffing in other areas. For years, I stuffed loneliness, fear, anxiety, depression, and anger with food. As a result, my body expanded to an alarming size. A size that brought with it joint pain, fatigue, poor sleep from snoring--waking up not only myself but my spouse as well as my children who sleep upstairs!  A size that brought shame, embarrassment, fear of social gatherings, and major depression. Not to mention wasting a lot of money on buying ever-larger sizes. I was literally eating myself to a premature death.  

It wasn't until I found freedom from my bondage to food that I could start seeing more clearly the other areas where I have been stuffing my life too full. Being a lover of books (and a homeschooler), I have spent decades adding to our home library, but I am finding that a small house has its limits on storage. I kept telling myself that if we didn't live in such a small house, that it wouldn't be so stuffed. The reality is, that just like when I bought larger clothes, it didn't solve my food stuffing problem, having a larger house will not be a solution to my book stuffing problem.  

And it's not just books, my home is a museum to past hobbies such as rubber stamping, cross-stitch, and many other forms of crafting.  It is crowded with a few hobbies I plan to do "some day" such as quilting and quilling. And an abundance of current hobbies such as board games and jigsaw puzzles--more than we could possibly use on a regular basis. To give up past, current, or future hobbies is to let go of a dream of part of our identity. Letting go of past hobbies feels like killing off a part of ourselves. But what if we could look at the sloughing off of old things as a release from a cocoon that confines and imprisons us?

I cannot begin to express the relief I feel that I no longer carry around 100 extra pounds every single day. I can barely lift a 40 pound bag of salt for our water softener; how in the world did I willingly haul that baggage around with me for decades? And I want the same kind of freedom from bondage in my home so I'm beginning the Uncluttered Course with Joshua Becker, author of The Minimalist Home.  I want to whittle away at the weight that too much stuff has burdened not only me but also my family for too long. I'm excited about creating more space in my life to enjoy the people that matter more to me than stuff.

Take Out the Trash

From time to time, we have forgotten to get our weekly bag of garbage out to the curb. In the wintertime, this isn't too concerning when cold temperatures keep odors in check. In summertime, however, we contend with not only the odors, but the added factor of flies and their offspring. Nothing roils my stomach more than to see maggots multiplying in a garbage can. Sorry for that gross picture but the shock factor is important. Because we need to examine our mind and consider the trash that we allow to sit there. And nothing good comes from unchecked trash.

Sometimes we move items in our mind to a version of a "Trash" folder which in essence means we have just transferred it from our conscious mind to unconscious. But just like the Trash folder on our computer continues taking up space behind the scenes, so too, can memories, wrong thinking and destructive feelings take up space in our life and take a toll on us.

The signs are not as obvious as larger clothes or cluttered homes, rather they are more subtle. For me, when my mind is full of trash that has not been fully dealt with, I am irritable, bitter, more prone to anger, and emotionally distant to others. Less willing to forgive, less teachable, and frankly my heart is in rebellion. The good news is that unlike our local garbage collector that only comes once a week, we have a Heavenly Trash Collector who is available at any moment of any day to process the garbage in our minds and hearts.

But we have to make the effort to put the garbage out at the curb. How do we do that? Through confession. By agreeing with God that something is sin, we are bagging it up, and when we set it at the curb--offering the garbage to Him to eradicate through His forgiveness--it is truly gone. Just as our garbage collector, removes our trash far from us, so too does the Lord:

"...as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us." Psalm 103:12 (ESV)

And while I have to pay our garbage collector to haul my physical trash, Jesus already paid for all my garbage to be hauled away. But only for those who surrender it to the curb.  Why would anyone not freely take out the trash? 

The Master Recycler

Sometimes, we live with the consequences of past trash. When God removes our sin, we aren't always free from its after affects. Drug, food, or alcohol addictions may leave a lasting mark on us. But those past failures or past struggles can still be recycled into life lessons you may not have learned any other way. I like how Mark Batterson put it in his book, Win the Day:

"I have no idea how your story reads right now. I don't know whether it's comedy, drama, or action and adventure. If you don't like your story line, God can change it. He can redeem the loss, recycle the mistake, and rewrite the pain." (pg. 19)

The only answer to lasting waste management is to entrust it all to a loving Creator. One who doesn't turn away from the maggots in our life, but lovingly cleans up not only our hearts but also our minds. Leave the trash behind and let God recycle past messes into beautiful lessons that reveal His  faithfulness and commitment to making you into a treasured possession.

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light." 1 Peter 2:9 (ESV) 

Let's make sure our lives proclaim the excellencies of the One who called us!