The Need to Weed (a.k.a. The Urge to Purge :-) )

"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."--Mt. 6:19-21

For a few years now, I’ve been sensing a gentle whisper from God that I need to weed excess “stuff” from my life. I think it’s fair to say that I’m not terribly materialistic: I don’t own a flashy new car, lots of clothes, or a big-screen TV. (I don’t own a TV at all!) But I do tend to hold onto two categories of stuff: things with sentimental value and things that might in any way, now or in the future, be useful. I’ve realized recently that, as far as the second category is concerned, I have a real Depression-era mentality-­-I don’t hold onto used string, but just about anything else is a candidate for "hoarding"!

Although I’ve been willing to weed, it takes time to weed, and time is one of the things that’s always been in short supply in my life, so I’ve never really acted on the whisper. This fall, though, the Lord seems to be turning up the volume through a variety of circumstances:

• The remnants of Hurricane Ike soaked southeastern Michigan in early September, resulting in water seeping into my apartment for the first time in the 15 years I’ve lived here. Fortunately, nothing was damaged, but moving lots of stuff from my bedroom so that the carpet could dry out made me aware in a new way of just how much stuff I really had. As I moved things back in, I started weeding. I’m not sure, though, if that experience alone would have sufficed to really get my attention.
  
  
• In mid-October, a friend in my apartment complex unexpectedly moved to California on short notice. When faced with the cost of shipping cross country, she chose instead to purge. The night that I helped her, I could see that she was really being brutal, appropriately so, in throwing things out or giving them away. It made an impact, and I was starting to connect the dots for my own life.
  
  
• The day before my neighbor left town, a close friend of mine, Jean, died unexpectedly during a heart catheterization procedure following a heart attack. As you might expect, losing a dear friend who was relatively close to my own age brought to life in a renewed way Jesus’ words, “You do not know the day or the hour.” In addition, another of Jean’s friends and I spent some time helping her sister sort through her library. Jean was not a "keeper" in the same way that I am, plus she was very organized. Nonetheless, there was still a lot of stuff for her siblings to deal with as they closed out her apartment. All three of us were left thinking, "If this is what someone like Jean left behind, then I really need to purge!"
  
  
• Finally, just in case I hadn’t gotten the message­--I can be pretty dense, so I always ask God to be blatant with me­--on St. Nicholas Day, December 6, Mom and I attended a party to which each guest was asked to bring a wrapped gift of less than five dollars. They were then all mixed up and redistributed to the 40 or so guests attending. When I opened mine, I found a small book entitled 101 Ways to Clean Out the Clutter. Does God have a sense of humor or what??? :-D
  

I don’t know why the Lord is choosing to emphasize this message right now. But as Fr. Benedict Groeschel has said, “Do not ask God, ‘Why?’ Ask rather, ‘What would You have me do?’ ” There’s no way at this point that I could possibly say that I don’t know what God wants me to do. I’m still not sure, though, how the time issue is going to work out, especially right now as I ramp up for the busiest month of my work year, so if you think of it, please say a prayer that I will be able to make the time, in the midst of everything else, to get done the weeding that He clearly wants me to do.

In 2009, may our gracious and merciful God also make clear to you what He wants you to do, and give you every grace you need to accomplish it. God bless you!

Theresa