We all have our guilty pleasures mine is the TV show Hoarders. Whether it is regular Hoarders or Animal Hoarders –I just can’t get enough of this train wreck TV. I have yet to figure out why it has made such a huge impression on other than the total gross out factor.
Compulsive hoarding is defined as is the excessive acquisition of possessions (and failure to use or discard them), even if the items are worthless, hazardous, or unsanitary. Compulsive hoarding impairs mobility and interferes with basic activities. It is easy to look at people particularly in a hoarding situation and think wow I could never be like that. But lets have an honest moment here, how many times do our hearts look like an episode of Hoarders with “living spaces sufficiently cluttered so as to preclude activities for which those spaces were designed”.
So often our hearts are overflowing with junk past issues, hurts, and wounds living a little pathway that we all allow the Lord to walk in. Much like a compulsive hoarder, the thought of letting go of it all, clearing it all out is paralyzing and filled with anxiety. The unknown is incredibly frightening and oftentimes people prefer an existence that is less than desirable because it is familiar.
It is easy to look at a woman pleading to keep a box full of books covered in cockroach eggs as crazy, but is it much different than clutching toxic pieces of our lives and refusing to let go? Romanticizing a past life filled with sin is much like the lady throwing her own poop in a room for 10 years—IT’S DISGUSTING!
John 8:36 says “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” It is widely quoted throughout Christian circles yet so many people are being held hostage by their crap (for lack of a better term). It is not about minimizing trauma, but maximizing freedom. Its about laying it all out there. I understand it takes a lot to truly strip away all that we are holding onto despite the fact that it is poisoning us. I know that it can be scary to be completely vulnerable even before the Lord. However, I also know what freedom feels like and the power of that manifested in my life is priceless.
Whether your heart looks like an episode of Hoarders or you have all your junk stuffed in one closet or under the bed–it is too much. You can fool yourself into thinking its harmless and no one will know, but it will manifest itself in your life. God’s plan for your life is so much greater than that!
Freedom is yours–believe it, embrace it, and RUN with it!!!
