It was overwhelming just to look at it, let alone do something about it. I exhaled hard grimacing at the mess in front of me. What was I going to do with all this junk?
Though I had hoped moving my family from West Virginia to North Carolina would prove to be a single event, it had, instead, come in stages. I loaded most of our possessions into the back of a typical orange-clad box truck and bounced them seven hours closer to the Atlantic Ocean. However, a large portion of a nearly two-decade collection of a six-member family had remained behind in storage, unsorted, haunting my thoughts as it sat knitting cobwebs in the dark.
Almost an entire year flew by with me procrastinating month after month the dreaded “second move.” Finally, begrudgingly, I made the long trip back to confront this unfinished business. Facing the mess I had so long ignored had me quickly calculating the cost of another year of storage. Some of it, maybe most of it, I knew, simply needed to be taken to the dump. Yet I knew, buried deep inside, under unsold garage sale boxes, crushed lamp shades, and strings of burnt-out Christmas lights, were my children’s first drawings, our wedding album, irreplaceable family treasures that needed to come home.
Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
– Psalm 139:23, 24 NIV
Taking inventory of what lies inside each of us can be just as daunting as this storage room was to me. Sorting through all the past hurts and struggles, hidden sins and resentments… it’s a monumental task that can be completely overwhelming. However, making the decision to open the locked door of our hearts and to confront the mess of our past is a vital step in changing the trajectory of our future.
The good news is that God can take all of it, all of it, and make something beautiful of our mess. There is nothing in our past too dirty or broken for God to redeem.
Are you ready to start the journey to wholeness? Open yourself up and let God lead you “in the way everlasting.”
Unfinished Business, by John Eklund, is an article from Pastors.com. © 2012 Pastors.com.
