Letting Go

My closet is beautiful. It is clean, organized, and perfect. The floors of my closet are vacuumed. My shoes rest neatly in shoe pockets. My purses are lined up in pristine rows. If I had a laptop, I would be sitting in there to write this article.

Unfortunately, my bedroom/office floor now contains all the junk that was in my closet before I cleaned it out today. I already hauled out several bags of out-of-date clothing, scuffed-up shoes, and seldom used purses. Still, there is all this stuff. Where did it come from? Why have I held onto it this long? And, most importantly, what am I gonna do with it now that I’ve uncovered it? (Heavy sigh.) Oh, well. One thing at a time, right?

There is my high school letterman sweater. (Drill team. Choir patches on the sleeves.) There is the red dress that Mark bought me to wear on our honeymoon. There are the numerous, slightly-too-small outfits that I refuse to part with, as incentive to lose the extra poundage that has crept up in the last few years. In the corner rests an exercise ball, two briefcases, a pair of swim shoes, a curly pony-tail clip thingie that I bought in a weak moment of stupidity, and about a half dozen tote bags.

I never use this stuff. I’m just hanging onto it, for no apparent reason. (Okay, I’m hanging onto it because I’m a sentimental sap.) But the prime real estate in my closet is valuable. I really shouldn’t be using it as a junkyard, no matter how nostalgic the junk is. It just takes up space and clutters my view.

You know, I think I do that with my brain space, too. I hang onto stuff that I have no use for, that just weighs me down and clutters my view. Like the time the girl in my second grade class framed me, set me up and told a lie about me. I have never forgiven her. And then there’s that two-timing weasel in college who . . . well, you get the idea. Why can’t I let those things go? They’ve been over and done with for decades. Why can’t I just forgive and forget, toss out those memories, and free up some valuable space in my noggin?

Maybe it’s because it is more of a hassle to clean it all out and let it all go than it is to just hang onto it. After all, look at my bedroom floor. It’s no fun stepping over all these little piles of stuff. So, I’ve just been cramming it into my closet, which has become more and more jammed, making that little room a nightmare instead of the dreamy place it is now.

But my mind should be a palace, a place where beautiful thoughts and valuable memories are stored. It should not be a junk yard, filled with angry memories and unforgiveness. It may not be wise to pull out all my mental junk at once, but maybe I could work on getting rid of a little bit at a time? Perhaps I will try to let go of some things that are no longer useful to me. To the best of my ability, I will forgive and forget. I will let some things go. Both in my closet and in my brain.

As for the hairy pony-tail clip thingie, I think I’ll keep that. You never know when a little extra fluff and curl might come in handy.

Colossians 3:13 “Bear with each other, and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another.”