What's In Your Junk Drawer?

            I went to see a professional organizer speak at a women’s group at church and it got me thinking, “Can I learn something about my inner thought life by examining the contents of a junk drawer?” Would I find analogies with the single button from a coat I donated years ago, the crumpled receipt from the doctor’s office, a ticket to Bruce Springsteen at Fenway Park….”Who did I go with?” I question, as I sift through the apparent dysfunction of the space.

            I listened to the organizer, and my mind drifted to my inner bonding process. I recognize that when feelings come up, I often go into automatic, and toss it into the “junk drawer” of my psyche, not wanting to address it because of some belief I’ve attached to “feeling”. I stuff them, and I stuff them in what I’m now calling my spiritual junk drawer.

Let’s take a peek inside…ah, there’s some anger and disappointment in the front, the need for approval, addictions…oh yeah the addictions…and behind them are these beliefs, at a deeper inspection, most of them false, true junk. If I move toward the back of the drawer I see some deeper core feelings, along with their associated beliefs. These are the items that have been in the drawer for so long, we’ve forgotten they even exist. They’ve been covered up by the junk that is so accessible out front.

            You see, I’ve discovered that sometimes I believed I was addressing my junk, by looking at what I needed to clear from the front of the drawer. It looked clean, and neat, yet would get messed up quickly because I didn’t address what was hiding at the back of the drawer. I asked myself, “What if I got brave, and got curious and excited about learning what was hiding in the back?” and I thought I need to look past the “I’m letting them walk over me” and the “I can believe they won’t listen to logic” behind the hair clips and wrinkled receipts and find the core feelings I’ve ignored and the false beliefs I have held. I can clean them up, find the truth with Spirit and hand it over to God. He knows what to do with them.

            There was a short video called “Shells” by Rob Bell, to address our spiritual side of our internal clutter. He told a story of his family day at the beach. His children were collecting fragments of shells, each trying to collect more, his oldest son spotted a starfish out a bit in the water. “Go for it” Rob said to his son, “go get your starfish”, and his son would run out into the water, and back to shore, each time getting a bit closer. Rob asked his son “Son, why don’t you get your starfish?”, and his son answered “I can’t my hands are full with the shell fragments.” It is like the shell fragments are the junk in our drawers, pieces of what could be whole. We need to let go of our shell fragments, to have room for our beautiful starfish. I have learned it can be fun exploring the junk drawer, the joy of discovering I can free myself of deeply held false beliefs, just by getting behind what is up front, and digging deep behind to find the core feelings, to explore them with compassion, and give it up to God, where he surely returns your heart to fullness of his joy and peace!