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Disclaimer: This is NOT our house!! |
We recently placed our house on the market. I could probably list a lot of reasons we decided to do it. Among them would be the need to move closer to my family, the desire to move to a more rural area, the love we have for Pike County, AR, the life changes we've gone through over the past two years.
It is a fact that our goal is to move to Glenwood. We do love it there. It's quieter. I'll be able to work from home. There are five lakes and three rivers within a half-hour drive. Our alma mater (Henderson State) is also a half-hour away (we have fond memories of HSU and our college youth ministry, MBSF).
But the goal of moving to Glenwood is really secondary. Our primary goal was to be able to go where God sent us so we could serve there. It seemed like a very simple goal, right?
We found out different. It took us months to prepare our house for listing. First, there was painting, landscaping and weeding that had to be done on the outside. The same had to happen on the inside as well. We found out quickly that the inside was by far the most difficult part. It seemed the more we dug out of closets and corners and from under beds, the more there was to dig out. We ended up renting storage both in Cabot and in Glenwood. The Glenwood storage would hold things we needed but not in Cabot. The Cabot storage held things we might possibly need quickly.
But a great deal of what we dug out didn't go to storage. It went into the garbage or to Goodwill. We discovered we had been hoarding a lot of things we would never use. We even found unused checks from the 1990s!! Our shredder was running 24x7 for awhile. We also found a lot of old photos from college or earlier, so we sat around with the girls and laughed and told stories to go with our photos.
Eventually, the house began to look like it was ready for listing. The clutter in the rooms was gone. Lauren could actually get into her closet again and Lacey's toys all had a place again. In fact, the house actually felt more comfortable. It was as if there was added stress sitting in the house with us in the form of clutter and junk, and when we removed it all the stress just left! It also became much easier to actually put the house on the market.
Another discovery during this endeavor was that there was more clutter we had to get rid of. In order for us to truly be ready for God to lead us, we needed to rid ourselves of everything that was preventing us from picking up and moving. So there was a spiritual element that had to be dealt with. We began to realize we were also engaged in spiritual hoarding. There was a lot of spiritual clutter and junk we needed to clear out. And the things we were hoarding were different for Dana than for me. Nevertheless, there were things that we were refusing to rid ourselves of. Things that were cluttering up our hearts and causing us needless emotional and spiritual stress.
Some may not understand the stress of searching for a church home. Maybe it's easier for some to do than others. But that's just the thing isn't it? Some people struggle spiritually for completely different reasons than others.
We found this spiritual clutter was also impeding our ability to step out on faith and do what we had been given to do. Just like hoarding can bring about a deep depression and withdrawal from society, spiritual hoarding can overwhelm us, depress us, and cause us to withdraw spiritually, effectively rendering us spiritually impotent.
What did we do? We began to pray more specifically about our needs and goals. First we prayed about finding a church home. I have to confess that, for me, finding our new church was a burden lifted. There was also the problem of finding a place in Glenwood. Did we want to buy or build? If we did build, were we going to have to start construction in the middle of the winter? These are things we talked and prayed about. And, since we're human, we don't always keep these things at bay. So when they come back to burden us we just have to keep turning them over to God.
So are we fully prepared to pick up and go wherever God leads? Well, probably not most of the time. However, there is a sense of accomplishment after having prepared a house for listing. And a sense of preparedness when you begin to overcome the spiritual obstacles. These combined make it much easier to say "I'm ready God!" and to truly have faith that He is going to open (and close) all the right doors for us!
Will we end up in Glenwood? Not if the Lord points us somewhere else! As I said, it's a secondary goal. The primary goal is to set ourselves in the middle of God's will.
Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. - Hebrews 12:1,2 (NIV)