What I Found in My Closet

The things I had put away.

Every summer I plan to clean out my closet but then I don’t. There have been a lot of boxes, high on shelves, that are full of things which I had forgotten about. A couple weeks ago I published “I Put Them Away” and this week I found some things I had put away. Only I had no idea they were still there.

One box held a young boy’s baseball hats – an Atlanta Braves cap with his name written carefully inside and another that said, “I love my grandpa.” I grieved the loss of both the boy and his grandfather as I held those dear belongings and then I carefully returned them to the box, labeled the front and put it back where I had found it. There are things you never can dispose of. Someone else will have to do that after I am gone.

I opened a box and a florist’s card floated down and landed on my shoe. Yes, it was the exact one I wrote about that I carried in my wallet for many years. And that was a very long time ago. I had no idea it still existed, much less that it was hiding in a box in my closet that I’ve been ignoring for - oh, two decades. Immediately I took it to the kitchen, put it in a bowl and set fire to it. It seemed the only appropriate thing to do. Some things we are finished with forever.

I found some things I had thought were lost – one was Carol King’s Tapestry album. I had mourned it’s loss and then, there it was along with some other old favorites. I paused my cleaning and ran to the record player upstairs and listened to the needles’ tiny scratches as “You’ve Got a Friend,” my all time favorite song, filled the room with the piano stylings and voice I love so much.

There were things I hadn’t worn for years that quickly went to Good Will – if they were in good shape. Letters I will read one more time and greeting cards I have kept. And on the very top shelf was a box of sympathy cards – not more than 30 years old. I knew what was in the box all along. I opened it, looked at a few things, found one precious thing, and threw the rest away.

My older grandkids like vintage grandma junk so I made some offers. My grandson took my husband’s high school duffel bag and my granddaughters, a few Precious Moments knickknacks and other décor from a previous millennium.

There are things we keep because they hold precious memories, things that were important to someone else and so we think they should be important to us. Other things we just don’t want to deal with right now. Later, perhaps?

My mom often refered to housecleaning as “bringing order out of chaos” and I find that God delights in bringing order from the chaos that occasionally leaks out of our souls in a way that makes us aware that it’s time for some reorganization.

In the closet of our souls there are a plethora of odds and ends – memorabilia, both sweet and distressing, emotions that we have stuffed into boxes, taped the cover securely and thrown on a shelf where it can not be conveniently reached. We may notice it from time to time, but we see it – just out of the corner of our eye and quickly avert our gaze, while thinking, “someday, someday far away, maybe, I will deal with that.” There are other things we hold in our hearts, precious for sure, but also containers of regret, blame, and unforgiveness with some anger and self-righteousness tucked in the corners. We find that the furnishings of our soul are unstable, weighted down by the power of what we will not deal with.

But the Holy Spirit, enters that chaos, starts sorting through our locked closets and begins the process of bringing out our messiness, little by little, showing us the mess and wreckage we have purposely ignored. We may be caught off guard by the stench of it; we’ve ignored it so long we didn’t smell it anymore.

It is a brave thing to pray, “Show me myself, Lord.” He is kind but also not shy about allowing us to be uncomfortable with who we have become and the shock of seeing what we’ve been ignoring or just plain hiding. He nudges us toward courage and gives us eyes to see in the dark corners of our souls, now illuminated with light. Difficult, but oh, so good. This is a life-long process, bringing order into the chaos of our psyches, piece by piece and mess by mess.

But the result is healing, sweet and of immeasurable value.

Yes, I cleaned my closet this week and its new orderliness calms me. I found some things I had to deal with – both the physical objects and their inciting reactions. I’m still thinking and praying through some of that – wondering what will rise to the surface and what goodness will come from that.