I had plans to clean the house today. Really, I did. There’s a little bit of a funky smell coming from the kitchen, there’s a pile of school work on the coffee table that needs to be thrown away, the cats have jumped in the window sills and knocked everything off on to the floor, the floor needs to be vacuumed, the bathrooms defunktafied, and a sink full of dishes washed. Oh, and let’s not forget about the science experiment that is known as the refrigerator. That’s just really where I’m at in life this week. Things need to be dealt with and in a pronto kind of way. After figuring bills for the month yesterday, I see I also need to go to work and get a lot done there so I can pay the hundreds of dollars of extra stuff the kids need money for the next two weeks (several out of town trips, $100 for school activity shirts, money for a camp, both of the boys have blown holes in the only pair of shoes they own that fit them, remember Steve Urkle? Yeah..one of the boys’ jeans looks like that, costume for a school play, and the list goes on. All of this equals M-O-N-E-Y). I’m a planner. I obsess about all these things that I have to do and worry about and I make a tangible plan on how to solve it. I make a list and write down my thoughts. Then, I make another list because I have to fix grammatical errors on the first draft and that means I can’t have misspelled words or lines or scribbles, heaven forbid.So, now I have my nice, clean, perfectly spelled list. You would think that would be the end, but no. It’s not. I have to write another list, this time detailing and planning out any possibility that would arise to derail my original plan. Every possible scenario must be accounted for and dealt with. A plan must be built around the plan so that the plan can be protected. When I am only 50% anxious whether or not my planned plan will be successful no matter what, this means the plan has reached the discussion planning stage. It’s time to discuss the plan out loud to myself so I can have a clearer vision on what direction the plan is headed. When that has been done roughly 27 times, it is now time to go over every detail of the plan with my family. They have to be up-to-date on the method of operation for this particular plans planning stages.When I am confident at least one person in my house has listened to 93% of the plan, then it’s time to share it on Facebook or some other form of social media. Everyone else must know the plans I have concerning the plan because if I am this obsessed with it, then they must become obsessed with it as well. That means we have bonded and I just live and die for spiritually bonding with people. Also, I have convinced myself that this method will hold me accountable, even though I have literally never had anyone approach me and say, “Oh, I saw on Facebook that you made plans to wash, dry, fold, hang up, and put away your white colored laundry today. I was just checking in to see if you accomplished your task?” I’m still waiting for someone to be as excited about my plan as I am, but until then…I’ll keep posting about it. So. Now you have a small glimpse in to the hamster-on-meth-running-on-a-wheel that is my brain and how I deal with every tiny thing that needs to be done in my life. People always say how they don’t know how I “do everything”. I don’t have the heart to tell them I don’t really do anything at all because I’m too busy planning out the plans that have to be followed so I can plan on how to do it.

So, I had plans to clean my house today and go to work. I was going to get up and check things off of my list. I even have my day planned out to accomplish tasks in blocks of time. However, I must confess that seldom works (even though it is well thought out!) because I’m still exhausted from my planning marathon of how I was going to clean my house I actually just sit on the couch and listen to music. Anywho…my final alarm went off this morning. I had already gotten the kids out the door to the bus, and husband had left for work just a little before. It was time to get up. It was time to spend an hour in the bathroom trying to put off waking up and starting my day. It was time to brush my hair, clean the sleep from my eyes, pop a zit, and fix my coffee. It was time to conquer the day. Instead, God decided to do something else. He decided that as soon as my alarm went off, he would give me a new direction and a new word for my day. As I was fumbling for my phone to press snooze again, He boomed in my head, “People, put down what you are picking up”. I opened my eyes because the sudden voice surprised me. He then said to me, “My army have become spiritual hoarders and they can’t be my hands and feet because their arms are full of other things”. This means the productive part of all my planning is on hold so I can now clear my head and share this with you.

Let’s look at hoarding. According to Michael Jenike, who is an OCD expert and a professor of psychiatry at Harvard, “Hoarders have great difficulty making decisions, especially around the value of their possessions”.  Studies basically show that hoarders hoard because they give too much value to their own possessions, and that makes it too difficult to decide what to get rid of, or whether or not they can get rid of anything at all. This morning God is showing me how we, his Children, have a hard time throwing our things away. Many of us know a lot about Him, His love for us, His plan for us, and how a relationship with Him works. For some reason, this knowledge alone doesn’t make us move in to action to be where He wants us to be.We can’t move our feet when we are burdened down with everything we are trying to carry. We can’t put our hands in to action to show God to the world when we refuse to put down what we have picked up. We may have knowledge and revelation about our relationship with him, but without understanding and actually DOING the action of giving up our proverbial stuff, we are missing the critical next step to living how He wants us to live.We can only plan our lives and plan our process and plan, plan, plan what is next but unless we carry that plan out, the plan doesn’t mean anything. It just leaves us spiritually exhausted and spinning in circles. Friends, it’s time for us, all of us including me, to stop hoarding the things that we have picked up along the way of our lives.

We pick this junk up all the time. Sometimes, life hands it to us and we take it and run. I remember when our kids were little, it seemed their tiny legs would get tired of walking within the first five minutes of movement. The kid would come up to us and reach their little arms up and seem so sweet and innocent and ask with big puppy-dog eyes to be picked up, held, and carried to their next destination. More often than not, it was hard to resists such a request from that little person, but it didn’t take long and my arms would be telling me they were done with carrying anything extra around. It was rare that while they were in my arms, the kid would be still and light weight. It was usually like trying to put socks on a snake. The wiggling, turning around, snot flying, and inadvertent kicking would just wear me out! Or, in the times they were still, that meant they were asleep and for some reason holding a sleeping child means they instantly gain 67 pounds. Why does that happen? Did some smart person like Newton or Benjamin Franklin, or Einstein ever let us in on the law or rule for sleeping children weight gain? If so, please enlighten me in the comments section. Whether the kid was asleep and weighed 297 pounds or was awake and acting like a kitten on crack, I would eventually have to give up and put the kid down and tell them it was time to walk for themselves. What happens when you put someone down that doesn’t want to be put down? Crying. Yelling. Hitting. Making everyone else think you are chopping off their limb with a dull butter knife. Just general children meltdown stuff. As a parent, what do you do? You pick the kid back up to get it to shut up! It’s usually not very lovingly, but you pick them up to find a little bit of sanity.

Friends, let’s stop picking up the crap and the junk and stuff that happens along the way that slows us down and keeps us from experiencing the fullness of God. It may throw a fit, it may be in your face, it may be a constant reminder that it is lurking, waiting, crying, wanting you to pick it back up again. Just like being a parent,sometimes you have to stand your ground and offer a lesson in maturity and not giving in to the draining demands of fit-throwing. It may seem easier said than done, but it’s possible. Let’s look at a few ways to do it:

Worship is one of my favorites. I like to sing, I like to worship so it comes the most easily for me. Really, when I think about it worship is kind of an umbrella term for the other ways we’ll talk about. I think making every day choices on reading, meditating, saying, doing, and being the word of God, seeking His direction for you are all ways to worship Him. Worship is about putting God in the right place of our lives and we can do that by several different means. Singing, dancing, raising our hands are just a few of those ways. Worshiping God is a choice of lifestyle every single day and the by-product of that choice is walking in His wholeness and grace and drawing in His strength that keeps you from picking up your junk.

The other day I realized that we are living in a new time where emotions are being dealt with. Generations before us kept their emotions hidden for a lot of different reasons. Now, it seems everyone is so emotional. We get offended, we talk it out, we make sure everyone around us knows how something makes us feel. Emotions are good, and they are something that God has given us but too often we let them dictate our choices and influence who we become. I think a big part in having a healthy emotional life is to accept those emotions, but work on processing them instead of just letting them spew everywhere. When we let the way we feel about something dictate how we handle the situation instead of the knowledge that God has given us, we are letting that gap stay open instead of heal. Heal these places in your life so that you won’t want to deal with them and hoard your emotions over them anymore.

This leads to having grace for yourself. You have to have grace. Some days are harder to heal the wounds than others. Some days the choice to live a life of worship gets put on the back burner. It happens. If you stay consistent you will move forward faster, but since you are human, you will have moments when your momentum stalls. Always have grace for yourself, but always trust HIS process.

I think one of the most important ways to give up emotional hoarding is to learn scripture about trusting God, anxiety, and how he makes things complete, whole, and new. Use those scriptures and say them out loud when you see yourself trying to fill your arms and hoard your problems again. The enemy can’t use his demeaning power against you when you come at him with the Living Word of God. This is your authority in your life and you have to use it!

Lastly, don’t be afraid to get help. If you have ever watched a television show about people who hoard, they always have to have the help of someone from the outside. People that are habitual hoarders have to have someone else come in and walk the process out with them. There is absolutely no shame in this (remember, shame doesn’t come from God anyway). Use whatever ways you need to heal from the situations in your life so you can put it down and know what do when it starts screaming for you to pick it up again.

After the words God has given to me today, I’m going to work on putting this stuff down. All the foolishness I talked about in the first paragraph has got to go. That is an example of me not just hoarding on to the idea of something, but it shows how I white-knuckle grasp that idea so tight that it disables me from acting, moving forward, and accomplishing the thing I am supposed to do. Why does picking up your house have to be a week-long-plan-a-thon? Please let me know what you are going to start putting down this week. It’s time to be free from hoarding!