Its time to clean out the Junk drawer!

It’s beyond capacity. It’s overflowing with random projects, school papers, craft materials, and candy wrappers from my secret stash. I was looking for something the other day and pulled open this overflowing junk drawer to find myself even more frustrated as a result of the overflow of mismatch that poured out. And instead of calmly sorting through the stuff I did what every mom of young ones did… I yelled. And then I shut it. And somehow I have a far fetched hope that the next time I open it will be different.

 

But it won’t.

 

Later that night as I sulked in my bad mood I began to think about some of the junk in my mental drawer. And, like the physical drawer in my house, my mental and emotional drawer is packed with old stuff, new ideas that have been halted, and the trash that I am trying to hide from others. And I closed it with the same hope I had for the drawer in the house… the hope that next time I open it I will see neat and tidy with no garbage.

 

But I won’t.

 

Too often we want to be neat and tidy. We want our house to be clean and organized, our schedules to be perfectly planned, and everything to be perfect for others to see. So when something on the counter is just not fitting that image we toss it in the junk drawer and shut it out of sight.

 

In our minds we do the same. We suppress our emotional distress so that on the outside we appear happy and relaxed, we shove our “Im not good enough” thoughts to the back hoping nobody will see them, and we hide our spiritual struggles just out of sight of our friends and family. And when we can shut the drawer we are able to put on our game face and act as if we are living our dreams.

 

And somehow it works until our drawer is so overflowing its pouring out the sides so much that we trip. We stumble over something ordinary because of something we tried to shove into our “don’t let them see me this way” drawer.

 

So let’s take a minute to organize that internal junk drawer into truth and garbage.

 

Empty out the thoughts of perfection because we all fall short (Rom 3:23). Empty out the thoughts of not good enough, because you can do anything with Christ in you (Phl 4:13). Get rid of the comparison to others, because you are God’s unique creation (Eph 2:10). And ditch the idea that you are not worth it, because Christ paid for you with His blood when you were at your worst (Rom 5:8).

 

Now fill that internal drawer with this: God’s love for you is so perfect, so complete, and so deep that nothing in this world can take it away- not even your own fear!(Rom 8:35, 1 John 4:9). He created you unique, to be YOU, and to be His (Psl 139:13, 1John 3:1).

Let’s declare this week as Junk Free Week. Every night empty out that internal junk drawer by spending some time in your Father’s graces, turning over all your worries and emptying any of your past. Turn it all over so you will stop tripping over it. And let Jesus fill that entire drawer with love and promises.

 

He will.

 

We will save that junk drawer in the kitchen for next week.