Out With the Old, In With the New

It's night-time, after bedtime. The house is perfectly quiet and still...peaceful. It would be the ideal time to drape myself across the sofa, light a candle, eat chocolates, and read a favorite book - time to just self-indulge for a moment and roll around in the quiet and solitude. But...that is VERY rarely what actually happens. I either fall asleep before my head even hits the pillow or I am endlessly trying to catch up on, as I have referred to before, my many "piles" around the house. My piles contain all sorts of objects - papers that I swear one day I will file, bills that I swear one day I will pay, my child's plastic cowboy whose cowboy hat I will super-glue back on eventually, one AA battery that I will one day test to see if it's good or bad, some outgrown clothes that eventually will make it into a bag and then to Goodwill, a Birthday card or two that will be thrown away when I get around to it, maybe some photos that I swear will make it into that album I have been meaning to purchase for 2 years, a magazine or two that I keep meaning to look at, etc., etc.... I will freely and without shame admit that I am a "pile" person. I love to make little piles because it makes me feel organized and when I "clean", this means I shift my piles from one room to another and change things from pile A to pile D and from pile F to pile C and maybe every now and then, on a caffeine-charged day, I can even eradicate a pile or two. Then I can feel really productive.

My favorite thing to do with my piles, though, is to shred papers. I don't know why, but I find it very cathartic to shred things. I make piles of old papers, old schoolwork from the kids (not the footprint reindeer or any of the keepsake stuff of course), junk mail, you name it, and then I just sit and shred - listening to that glorious ripping sound as the paper is torn apart and annihilated, rendered forever illegible. I have even been known to bring home old papers from work (even though we have a shredder at work) and shred them....The other day I came in for work and SL said "I have a surprise for you!" with a big grin on her face - it was a pile of papers for me to shred. Pitiful, huh? So as I am writing this I am thinking maybe I do have a problem. I'm sure that if I sat down with someone talented in psychoanalysis, they could come up with some sort of fascinating reason behind this fetish for shredding things. I think that I just like the finality of it - there is a paper that I don't want any more - I never want to look at it again or think about it again and so, in shredding it, I have forever destroyed that document and can now take it to the recycling place and save some trees and I can know that my house is now a few pounds lighter in useless paperwork.

Since my divorce, I have finally in the last 9 months found a peace and a lack of fear that I've never known before. After months of panic attacks, depression, inability to sleep, and fearfulness, I finally have a peace that passes understanding. I have had some people ask questions in the last year or so like "Doesn't it bother you when he......" or "Do you every worry about _________ with the kids" and "How do you respond to this when he...." In the past, my answer to all of those questions would have been an emotion-filled "YES!!!" "Yes, it drives me crazy," "Yes I am scared to death," "Yes my heart starts racing and I think I'm going to pass out when I think about that", "Yes, yes, yes"..... But the problem is that when I lived in that constant state of fear and dread, every event, every circumstance, every call, every E-mail, would just add useless and foul clutter to another "pile" that was already in my mind. Then there were more piles and more and more and my mind was so cluttered that I literally couldn't even think straight.

Finally, I just got sick of it. Not just a pitiful, whiny "I'm tired of feeling this way, poor me" but a determined, put-the-gloves-on, ready-to-fight-and-destroy sick of it where I told God I would do whatever it took to be rid of the clutter. I just decided that enough was enough and it was time to do some serious shredding. So, one Saturday morning, after I had been fasting for about 2 weeks, I fell face-forward before God and told Him I was sick of carrying all this crap and all these fears around and I was ready to just let Him eradicate all of it. And He did - but it took me getting to that point of being sick and tired of holding on to it before I would truly give it to Him and not take it back in my own hands. It also took me getting to the point that I would do anything to get rid of it because part of what He wanted me to do - which involved total forgiveness of all those who had hurt me - I was not ready for until that point.

This is not to say that I am never fearful at all or that I don't ever worry about my children and their safety. But it is different now. I hold that thought in my hand for a brief moment and I look over it and think about whether that is a thought I want to keep around or not. I would never keep a dirty diaper or a rotting piece of chicken in one of my many piles at my house. I don't just throw any old thing into one of my piles; it has to be inspected and categorized first! Just so, I don't want just any fearful, angry, or bitter thoughts stinking up my mind and infecting my thoughts - so, instead of filing that thought away for later use, I take it to God and I ask Him to shred it once and for all and I pray His forgiveness and grace and HIS protection and justice over the issue. And when it sneaks back in my head, which they often do, I quickly discard it again, knowing I have given it to my Father and He will take care of it.

If you are sick of the panic, the fear, the anger, the bitterness, the sadness, you will never 100% be able to let go of it unless you get so absolutely sick of it that you decide to destroy it and refuse to let it back in. If you don't shred it, it can always come back to haunt you. The Lord CAN change this in you if you let Him - it is for freedom that He has set you free in Christ and He wants you to be free indeed, with nothing holding you back (Gal 5:1, John 8:36). So let go of this yoke that is not from Him and let Him destroy it in the name of Jesus.

2 Timothy 2:22-24 (Amplified)
Shun youthful lusts (see 1 Peter 2:1) and flee from them, and aim at and pursue righteousness (all that is virtuous and good, right living, conformity to the will of God in thought, word, and deed); [and aim at and pursue] faith, love, [and] peace (harmony and concord with others) in fellowship with all [Christians], who call upon the Lord out of a pure heart.
But refuse (shut your mind against, have nothing to do with) trifling (ill-informed, unedifying, stupid) controversies over ignorant questionings, for you know that they foster strife and breed quarrels.
And the servant of the Lord must not be quarrelsome (fighting and contending). Instead, he must be kindly to everyone and mild-tempered [preserving the bond of peace]; he must be a skilled and suitable teacher, patient and forbearing and willing to suffer wrong."