boxes

I’m currently purging my room.

There’s a pile of clothes on my floor and a closet of empty hangers waiting to be dressed. I also have an interesting assortment of plane tickets, birthday cards, wedding invitations, & old photos I’m too nostalgic to ever throw away sitting in a wooden box at the foot of my bed.

There’s also a ton of stuff that’s in piles for donate, trash, or “identify if I need this for my taxes”.

You know how it is.

This process of out with the old, in with the organized has been happening over the last week. It’s not that I’m trying to drag it out; goodness I’d like to be done already. It’s not that I’m not ready to let go of the stuff, either; I just want to make sure I go through every corner of my room thoroughly. No pile of misplaced things should be left unturned, left to deal with later – because, let’s be real, later turns into “I’ll get to it some day” and that, inevitably, turns into never.

The perfectionist in me from back in the day wouldn’t have let me leave my house until this room cleanse was done properly. Life wouldn’t have been able to go on if everything that needed sorting out wasn’t put into boxes, closed and taped up for good, and then gotten rid of immediately. My mind still thinks, See, New Year’s is around the corner, so tie up all the loose ends before Christmas, before going to Calgary, before the end of the year – start fresh, come home to a clean room.

But life does go on. And sometimes the boxes stay there.

I’ve pushed these boxes down the hall a few times. They get outside my room so that I can’t see them while I’m climbing into bed, but they block my exit route just enough to make it seem like I’m doing a creative dance routine every morning on my way to the kitchen. It’s not impossible to get around, just a lot harder than it could be if I got rid of the boxes.

I’ve let the boxes in my heart stay far beyond their welcome.

Some are taped up, ready to be given away as soon as I say so. Some are still open because their contents make me think maybe, what if, perhaps someday…

And some are empty because I need to carefully inspect the things scattered around them before I put them away.

Advent has been so good this year. My heart feels like it’s physically being stretched wide open, massaged in every direction for deep, thorough inspection of all its crevices. Nowhere to hide, no aspect of my life left unturned, nothing left to keep to myself.

No wonder Advent is four weeks long: that inspection process takes time. It’s uncomfortable, but I don’t want to half-ass it. I want to be able to pack those boxes knowing that, even if they stay around for a little while longer, I don’t have to dig through their contents again to understand what’s inside.

The boxes will all be taken out one day. Perhaps not all at once, but eventually they’ll be gone. And then, because I’m human, new boxes of stuff will accumulate and the cycle will start over. It’s not a perfect process; one that neatly wraps itself up by December 25^th and presents itself as a thing you can make a New Year’s Resolution about to get rid of.

But it doesn’t have to be a perfect process.

I’m here, all of me, letting God sweep everything out of the corners of my heart to make room for Him. Letting the discomfort sit so that I recognize the ache for what it is. Letting it take as long as necessary so that nothing is left for “later”.

I used to think that Advent was this perfect process, a month of preparation before Christmas to make room and quiet my heart, but my heart never felt quite like this before.

The immediate future is a season of growth, exploration, and, most importantly, of healing for me. Christ came to heal us, not to push the pain into the hallway out of sight. He came to sit with us as we go through all the boxes that make life difficult to maneuver at times. He’ll be the one telling me I really won’t use those things again – no matter how many times I try to think of a reason for maybe, what if, perhaps someday – but, ultimately, He’ll let me choose to give it away.

My heart is ready for Christmas. Boxes and all.