This year, although only seven weeks old, has been full of purging. In all areas of my life, I am getting a lesson in simplification. Not from the aspect of doing and having few things, but in evaluating all I have and do and asking God, What’s worth keeping?
This brings up different questions in my mind. It also qualifies the keepers differently than if I were simply thinning the herd of things that crowd my home and heart. If I were simply looking to dwindle it down I would choose the things that are hard, or take too much time, or that are the oldest. So in a sense I am not purging at all. I am qualifying the things/activities that get to stay in my life.
For example, I have been doing my office remodel. I am excited to share the final product in my next post, but this one corner of the office needed its own post. As I have been remodeling we decided to give our two young girls who share a room, two different dressers. These dressers are lower and easier to open. (Because so help me, they will be putting their own laundry away in 2015)! The result of this decision was that they no longer needed the antique dresser that was holding their pint-sized threads. I have a basic dresser already in the office and it was holding (most) of my craft supplies. It is newer and a bit of a blank canvas as it was an unfinished wood and was secretly begging to be painted and have pretty, pretty knobs added in place of the chunky wooden ones that adorned each drawer.
I had a choice to make: Keep the smaller, ready-to-be made over, newer dresser, or the antique dresser who is who he is and could probably be sold for a nice amount because he’s fancy and trendy in a hipster, old-school kind of way.
Now I’m not saying I spent many nights losing sleep and praying about this decision, but I did ask God. I thought about the fact that I spotted this beauty when he was covered in some color of paint (that I can’t remember now) at a garage sale in the summer of 2002. I bought him for $20 and spent a decent amount of time stripping and staining him, and adding handles that fit with his design. I moved him into my very first apartment that summer. He has been with me ever since. Five moves and I think he is the only piece of furniture I still have.
He qualifies to stay.
He also holds all of my craft supplies and then some.
Many times in life we need to hold everything in a given area up to the Light of our Heavenly Father and let him tell us what is worthy of the space in our home, the space in our heart, and the space on our calendar
In all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight. Proverbs 3:6
Because he loves you and delights in being a part of every aspect of your life.
We can make our plans, but the LORD determines our steps. Proverbs 16:9
Because in the end our soul and its destiny matter most to God. This world and all of its possessions will not last.