I’ve been HOARDING…

In case the 2 or 3 of you friends (who read this blog) hadn’t noticed, I haven’t written for a while.  Well, it’s because I’ve been HOARDING.

Let me back up just a bit and explain.

As each day, week, month, and year passes, I begin to realize more and more the subtle ways that I feel like God speaks to me.  I’m SLOWLY, VERY SLOWLY, discovering that more often than not, it’s in very quick little thoughts or phrases rather than big novel length revelations.  I mean, I get those too sometimes, but as I look back with intentionality, I realize that these thoughts or ideas or convictions land on my brain like a weightless butterfly that lands on a flower, only to quickly flit away the minute you notice it and try to capture it with your fingers.

And that’s what happened just a week or so ago.  I was in my room, putting away clothes, cleaning up and the thought quickly ran through my brain…”You’ve been hoarding.”  Rather than toss it aside, I actually stopped what I was doing, spoke the thought out loud to myself as a question, just to make sure I’d heard right and then the thought answered itself with, “YES, you’ve been hoarding.”

Ok, got it.  But I wanted to know what I’d been hoarding.  The wisest next thing to do would have been to ask, “Ok well what have I been hoarding?”  But, as in usual fashion, I automatically figured I knew what this was all about.  I knew what God was trying to speak to me  - this had to do with money, right?  That had to be it.  Or at least money had to be ALL that this was about.

So over the next few days, I chose to run with this seemingly random thought.  I did feel convicted that the way I’ve been living for so long, in regards to money, involves an element of hoarding.  Some would call it SAVING and there certainly is a benefit to that and a time for that.  But for me, I realized that I hoard money – solely out of FEAR and a complete lack of trust that God will provide it when I need it and exactly how I need it.

But this HOARDING that God was speaking to me about had much more to do with than money.  YES, it DID involve ways that I hoard money and ways that that needs to change.  It also involved soo much more – more than I really cared to deal with.  And thus, Pandora’s box popped open.

Just a couple of days ago, that word HOARDING flitted into my thoughts again.  My antennas were up.  Largely due to some conversations I’d had earlier in the week with friends about walls – those things we have allowed FEAR to build around our hearts and lives to try to keep pain and the people and events that cause it at bay.  I wondered how WALLS & HOARDING might go hand in hand.

So to the dictionary I went, looking up the definition of HOARDING.  I expected to find something about being a pack rat.  My thoughts immediately went to one of those shows on TLC about the family with the “messiest house in america.”  That was my definition of HOARDING or someone who hoards.  But this is what I found…

Hoarding:  to keep (as one’s thoughts) to oneself

This definition caught me off guard – BIG TIME.  That’s when everything started to crystallize.  I knew that this was a message to me, clear as a bell, to start writing again – no matter what the consequences.

I chewed on the definition again this morning – trying to see if I could find some way that it might mean something else.  I’m REALLY good at doing that.  It’s my way of making excuses as to why I don’t have to do what I need to do.  I also chewed on how keeping my thoughts IN aids in keeping my walls UP – a way of mental and emotional protection from the internal & external assaults.

You see, I don’t love writing.  Or maybe I just don’t love the consequences of writing.  I don’t like the mental battle I must face of taking out my sword to fend off the inner critic who wars with me every time I try to sit down and write what I think needs to be said (WW3 is going on in my head even as I write this!).  I don’t love the discipline of just writing, no matter how much it may suck one day, while extol brilliance the next.  I’ll also be honest in that I don’t want to hear the criticism that may come with putting your thoughts out there.  I’ve certainly criticized others and so naturally I would expect the same.  So to keep my thoughts to myself is to stay safe  - far away from that battlefield of criticism.  To that end, it seems that I have thus chosen to HOARD.

But not today at least.  I can’t guarantee tomorrow, for I’m only given today.  I can’t guarantee that I won’t get lazy, surrender to FEAR and APATHY, and wait another 6 months to a year to write once more.

Today I write.  Today I choose to not hoard my thoughts.  And maybe, over time, the other things that I know I hoard – my time, my money, my food, parts of my heart, my love – I will choose, day by day, to take my grip of control off those things and give them away freely.  That is my prayer today.

Proverbs 18:16 (NASV): “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him before great men.”  Hmmm, “makes room” doesn’t leave any space for hoarding.  Something more to chew on…