Hoarding. More Than A Show on TLC.

Chad and Chloe spent the day at a black belt seminar. Emma and I spent the morning in the pool and then came home for our favorite lunch: Tuna melts and homegrown tomatoes.

After lunch, Emma settled into my bed for a nap and I found myself alone with a basket of laundry. Somehow I found myself watching TLC's show that documents people who hoard. I have never seen this show and quite frankly, it made me itch.

I could hardly breath seeing how these people live. I kept expecting rats to run across the screen. As quick as I was to judge, the Holy Spirit was just as quick to convict.

Watching these people walk through the emotional ordeal of admitting their need for help was hard. I'm not sure I would want a camera crew walking around filming my "issues".

Over the hour I spent becoming attached to these people, God slapped me across the face with something. You don't have to be surrounded by trash, unopened mail, old takeout cartons, flea market finds, grandma's furniture or dirty laundry to have a hoarding problem. Nope.

Sometimes we hoard things like unforgiveness, untended wounds, bitterness, resentment, and jealousy. At least I have. These things leave you empty, lonely and looking.

Looking for something or someone to love us, to cherish us, to tell us we are amazing. To make us feel accepted and complete. When those things or that person we have placed all our hope in fails, and they will, we are left empty and often with a wound.

As I watched these hoarders so emotionally part with all the "stuff" that consumed their life, their homes and had isolated them from their family, it was like watching them break down the wall around their hearts. For one lady, the process moved from being painful and became healing. She threw a party to celebrate her freedom.

I wonder if she knows what those of us who have experienced the power of Jesus in our life know. It was for FREEDOM that He set us free.

Galatians 5:1 says:

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

One thing God continues to be putting in front of me and then placing people in my face to share it with is that to experience true freedom in Christ, you have to spend time with Him. DWELL with Him, linger in His presence, rest and not resist where He has you right now. Sometimes to really dwell in His presence, we must walk away from some things.

Things like bitterness, anger, unforgiveness. We must allow Him to tend to those wounds we are hoarding. We must release our grip and allow Jesus Christ, the one and only to heal our hearts and then,

Then we LIVE. Really live.

Philippians 3:12-14

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers [and sisters], I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

I don't know where you are in your walk with Jesus, but I do know that we are all in process. Some parts of the process are easier than others, but I'm learning that anything I thought was worth hanging onto or hoarding, is NOT worth it. If Jesus asks me to walk away from something, as hard as it may be, it is worth it.

He is worth it.

I'm off to check my heart's closet and see if there is anything else I need toss out.