Ankle weights in the Attic
The virus has closed down my “office hours” it has brought me new co-workers that are with me 24/7 and demand my full attention. Between preparing every meal and playing games and homeschooling it is easy from me simply “not to have time”. But that is a poor excuse.
Truly it is. I am actually self quarantined at with my childhood home and family farm. These two locations are kinda like bringing a child to Narnia! My kids have adventures all day long, they can spend the entire day inside and not get stir crazy. Or we can hike for hours and not see another soul. And I have my parents here to help with all the details I normally take care of; laundry, cooking, cleaning and general life stuff. So really while other parents are in chaos with their kids at home, I am not. I have actually been highly blessed in the midst of the circumstances. So here I am writing in an attempt to create something to encourage you to push forward into the Blessings God has for you in the midst of what the world throws at you and walk boldly in who the Lord has made you to be.
Since we have been asked to stay home from the governor my parents and I have taken on the task of cleaning out the attic. I don’t know when the attic started to become the storage space for my childhood, but my kids have loved their study of the 80s as I have been pulling out toys and games galore. My mom and I have thrown out a truck load of old empty boxes, yes I kept all the empty boxes from my toys, school projects from my elementary years, and broken toys. We have found a barbie house, the barbie pool and most impressively the Barbie McDonalds complete with big macs and fries. But we have been searching for my calico critters. We found the empty boxes and have spent hours sorting through every box that is labeled “jeniffer’s keepsakes” or “packed by Jeniffer” to no avail.
Then my mom, while laughing hard enough to pee her pants, handed me a box of ankle weights. I had passed this box for three days. . . and laughed at the fact that we kept 10 lbs. ankle weights for 30 years! I know you have already guessed it; the box didn’t contain ankle weights, but it didn’t contain my missing treasure either. Nope it was a box of my brothers match box cars. But here is what I learned . . . Nothing in that room could be could be judged by the label on the box. Here I was sorting through boxes I felt I could trust to be my treasures. . . because they were labeled as such, and yet each time I opened a box I found trash. Now I’m holding a pile of match box cars from an ankle weight box and the harsh truth is that every box needs to be examined is pouring down on me. There is some box in that attic that holds my treasured calicos, but in order to find it I have a ton of trash to sort through.
But this is the real truth of my life. Every box of my heart needs to be examined and poured out before the Lord. Because what I have labeled as good, or valuable, or worth keeping, might just be the very thing the Lord is trying to work out of me. Or as in the case of the ankle weights maybe just maybe the box I have passed over as useless is the very thing God wants to Grow in me, maybe I have labeled, filled it, filed it, and forgotten where it is and the Lord who began a good work in me wants to see it to completion.
So in the midst of our social distancing, I would encourage you to spend some of this self quarantining time resting in the Lord and permitting him to unpack the boxes you have labeled. Let the Lord alone judge what is good and what needs to be trashed. May we all learn the importance of a sabbath, the true skill of resting in the Lord, so when we are free to roam once again we will actually miss these days.