A Little Cleaning… A Long Way to Go

One of my goals for 2009, really for the first half of 2009, is to move closer to GSU, where I’ll be attending school in the fall. As such, I decided to start cleaning out a lot of junk out of my car, room, and closet. I figure it’ll make things a whole lot easier when I move if I can just throw stuff in boxes instead of having to simultaneously clean. Today was the first real day of cleaning (and I shouldn’t say day because it was really only a few hours) and I feel like I’ve made, not even a dent, more like a ding. I’ve got a long way to go. During the course of cleaning I realized that there’s a lot of truth to the fact that the way that you keep your home is the way you keep your spiritual life.

My space had so much stuff piled up from the last 10 – 12 years of life. While I’ve taken the time to get a few things in order, I’d never really done a thorough cleaning. I just kept letting the junk pile up because I could still function with it there, I found a way to make due around it. There was dust so thick in some places because I just hadn’t touched those areas in a while, perhaps maybe 8 or 9 years. I found magazines and receipts from 2003 and earlier. I found pictures from 7, 8 years ago.

How could I have gone so long without finding these things? Convenience. It wasn’t convenient for me to take the time and clean everything out. It was much easier just to let the piles get higher and higher and slide things here and there. Maybe even occasional smaller cleanings to clear some space for some junk. But never an overhaul like this.

I thought, “How often do we do the same things I did in the physical, in the spiritual?” How often do we just push things aside to make room for more mess? Do we let issues go unresolved, just because it’s easier to pretend like they’re not really there? Are the ways and methods that we used to get us to where we are now going to take us to the next level?

Now that I’m moving into a new season, both spiritually, and geographically, it’s time to make a clean sweep and get rid of the things I no longer need. In order to move into the next season I have to examine my space and throw out the excess that may have been useful in the past, but no longer serves a purpose.

Needless to say, I’m not anywhere close to finished, but over the next few months, if I can chip at it here and there, before you know it, I’ll be finished. And then I’ll be ready for what’s next… Really ready.