Greetings to Everyone!
We took off the summer from the blog (quite unintentionally) to enjoy ourselves, as we went to family reunions, took a nice vacation in Mexico (evident by the picture in this post), and spent time with family and friends. We hope your summer was as enjoyable, but after several inquiries from friends and cohorts, we're back!!
A good amount of soul searching took place as well. Just recently, we decided to clean our basement -- with the help of our friendly domestic assistant who came to our aid several times this year. To my surprise (I really wasn't surprised, just overwhelmed), my collection of papers went back nearly ten years. Ever had an issue you just knew you had to face, but never really wanted to? This is a life lesson that I found out recently just how badly I needed to learn, even though I knew I had to, just never had the courage to get it done.
Now, today at church we had a member come back just to spread his message of love and redemption, a man many of you may know as Kem. Kem Owens spent many years struggling with addiction and overcoming obstacles on the road to his recovery, finally opening his life to the possiblities enough to let his gift of music shine for the world to see. One of the things he said was that courage does not mean absence of fear. To have courage means to persevere in spite of the fact you are afraid. I knew exactly what he meant, and saw the blessing of this lesson myself.
See, I've been dealing with clutter all my life. Not that I have a love affair with paper. I actually hate seeing it. But many times I hate dealing with it, figuring I can always sort through it later. It doesn't help that I have a government analyst job that deals with nothing but paper, where every move you make seems to require to touch, write on, or create another sheet generated from the robbing of Mother Nature's forests. It's like letting a choco-holic loose in a candy factory -- no gain, no recovery from the madness, only enabling the problem even further. And I always knew that I would have to do something about that basement. If it wasn't for Wanda's ultimatum for me handling the situation (as she lovingly puts that she's merely trying to contain the madness), you'd probably hear about me being discovered buried under a mound of copies and flyers and loose sheets. So we decided to take the plunge and call our domestic expert to come in and help. I thought I could amass a ton of shredding before the date arrived, but to no avail, the problem stared me in the face on that day.
Now, I was never really afraid to deal with the laborious task, as I would tell myself. Just never had the time to sit down and do it, though for many evenings after work it probably would have only required one or two hours to muddle through, for what, six or seven nights tops? It had to come to head on this one day.
I sat through shredding the current mail after moving all the stuff into one area so we could clean the rest of the space, and it felt like therapy going through everything. You know how you make something out more than what it is when you worry extra about it? The shredding was not as bad as I thought, though it did take a while. And you know what? It felt good to let go, to release all that junk and rid ourselves of useless things we most likely will never look at again. Wanda keeps urging me to call a professional shredder. I keep insisting that I can handle getting rid of it all myself, though I know that eventually I will have to call the folks soon. I guess I just want to prove that I can overcome this demon with a little help. But in all, I was exercising it without even knowing it. We had talked before of how clutter may be blocking our path to prosperity, but I was always like, "Well, it's only a few papers. How can that hurt?"
This is my testimony: The same day of the cleaning, as I was cleaning out my own blocked mind, a miracle of sorts took place. After our domestic assistant left, I checked the mail, as it was mid-afternoon when we finished. Looking through the paper envelopes (great, more stuff!), a check had come for Wanda from a part-time private practice job she held three years ago! Now, it's not like we were in desperate need of the money (though every extra penny helps), just extremely grateful. I finally realized that the point of God's lesson was there for me to discover. The clutter was, and is, blocking our prosperity, and nothing made me feel more powerful than discovering that lesson.
Of course, I still have a long way to go. But knowing that I could 1) overcome the burden of clutter I have known nearly all my years; and 2) learn the not-so-difficult lesson of opening up to God's blessings made everything that much more worthwhile. It's not just about having a clean house, but having a clean mind, clean spirit and clean heart. And clean means open, ready, willing to receive. Think about it. If there's anything in your life that is getting in your way, please get rid of it right now. Got clutter?
--Don
