Editor’s note: Dana White is a Jesus follower, the creator of the No Mess Decluttering Method, and (much to her own surprise) a Decluttering Expert. In her latest book Jesus Doesn’t Care About Your Messy House, encourages us to kick the shame of a home that’s less than perfect and invites us to soak in the love and grace of Jesus instead. Enjoy this excerpt.
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When my son decided to take a gap-year mission trip around the world, I felt all the feelings a mom in my position would expect to feel. When I realized he had to pack everything (including a tent and a sleeping bag) into one hiking backpack and a small daypack, I got a little jazzed by the challenge.
As he was packing, he realized his beloved, very large Bible would take up more space than he had available, so I offered him my thin Bible. (Same words, just without additional study tools and maybe smaller print.) He casually took it. I smiled bravely to his face but cried the next morning when I used my husband’s Bible. I missed my kid, but I really also missed my Bible. I’d had that Bible for years — transformational years in my spiritual journey. The underlines and tiny notes in the margins felt like a part of me. I knew the physical paper hadn’t transformed me — the words had — but it was still painful. The struggle was worth it, though, because (dramatic pause) my son needed my Bible.
After he left, I made a stop at a Christian bookstore (not simple since the closest one is almost an hour away). I wanted to touch and feel and hopefully bond with a new Bible. I found one I liked and brought it home. At first, I still missed my old Bible with its crunchy-from-coffee-spills pages and rubbed leather cover. But the new one... had two ribbons. The Bible study I’d just begun involved a lot of flipping back and forth, so having two ribbons was nice. Also, the new Bible was my favorite color. I kind of loved it.
I’d given up something I loved for the sake of my kid going to tell people about Jesus, but I wasn’t suffering quite as hard as I’d thought I would. My story was still dramatic though. I’d sacrificed my beloved Bible for a meaningful cause. I’d cried about it and everything, y’all.
Then my son texted. His training in the US was coming to an end, and he was heading overseas. He’d packed and repacked and figured out what he could live without. He decided the big Bible was worth the space and weight. I mailed him his Bible, and he mailed mine back to me.
Well, that was anticlimactic. All my sacrifice was for nothing. My great story of giving up my beloved Bible was significantly less dramatic then. To further diminish the drama, I decided to... keep using the new one. I mean, it had two ribbons!
This ended up being kind of a nonstory. I like stories (mine especially) to have big moments and powerful endings. I had sacrificed my Bible. For my son. For a mission trip. If you’re going to give up your Bible, that’s pretty much the very best way to do it, right? I was letting it go so it could go do great things!
- I used to want all my decluttering stories to have satisfying endings.
Unfortunately, my desire for the stuff I didn’t want in my own home to go do great things in its next life brought my decluttering progress to a grinding halt. When I stopped to worry about where my stuff was going, if I focused on creating a powerful ending for my crap, the stuff sat in my home for way too long.
My castoffs continued cluttering my house while I obsessed over getting them to the very most perfectest places where they’d be appreciated and loved. Often they sat in the garage until they ended up dusty, unappealing, and forgotten.
Sometimes I had great ideas about where my clutter should go, but the people I thought would be excited to take it didn’t want it. Or I kept forgetting to take my kids’ hand-me-downs to them, and their kids outgrew them too.
More significant than other people missing out on my junk, though, is the part about the junk staying in my house. My house was out of control, well over my Clutter Threshold. I was desperate to declutter. Creating different piles of things to go to their perfect, appreciative homes felt like decluttering, but my house wasn’t getting any easier to manage. Actually, it was getting worse. What had once been shoved into my kids’ closets was now stacked in the hallway, on the guest bed, or on the dining room table. Those stacks were highly likely to topple or get shoved back into the closet at the sound of a doorbell.
Then there was the three-ton example. When we bought a car, we chose not to trade in our old Chevy Suburban because we envisioned being heroes to someone who could really use it and appreciate it. They would be incredibly grateful to us and probably go on and on about how thoughtful and generous we were. Maybe they’d even cry a little.
That gargantuan thing sat in our driveway until it died completely on one of our infrequent rides in it. Our only option to get rid of the Suburban without spending money to fix it first was donating it to an organization that would tow it away. We’d never know what happened to it.
Controlling the Narrative Stops the Story
My desire to turn my clutter into satisfying stories always features myself as the hero. But that desire is unrealistic, and it usually backfires.
So what’s the spiritual parallel here? How do we get from an old Chevy Suburban to Jesus?
My life as a follower of Jesus is not transactional. My obedience to God comes out of my identity as His child. His Holy Spirit living in me means I desire to do what’s right. I don’t obey to ensure a satisfying ending in this life. I can follow Jesus, pray every day, and strive to live in holiness, but bad things will still happen. Christians get cancer. A Christian’s home can burn to the ground just as easily as the home of someone who doesn’t love Jesus. My best friend at work can get moved to a different department with a different lunch schedule.
- As believers, we’re not promised an easy life and most definitely not a life the world would consider safe. But we are promised God.
We are promised a relationship with Him and the peace that comes with that relationship. God’s peace changes what we want out of life. It also changes how we look at every situation in our lives.
In John 9, when Jesus healed a man who had been blind his whole life, people wanted Jesus to tell them why this man had been blind from birth. Who had sinned? The man or his parents? Jesus answered,
Neither this man nor his parents sinned... but this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him. — verse 3
I sometimes find myself wanting to exchange my obedience for a guaranteed result. I’ll pray for direction, but I’ll add to that prayer: Please let me know exactly where each path will end up if I come to a fork in the road.
God’s Word is a lamp unto my feet, but it isn’t a crystal ball. I can see what to do now, in this moment, but I can’t know where I’ll end up. If I’m unwilling to move forward until I know how it will all end, I’m stuck never moving.
When I follow Jesus, I can move forward in obedience even though I don’t know how God will use that obedience or where He’ll take me.
I literally, in my wildest dreams, could not have pictured myself teaching people all over the world how to declutter. I’m thankful I said yes when God told me to “write about that,” even though I had no idea what He had planned.
I’m not promised a happy ending here on earth, but I am promised that in every situation, God will be with me. That means even the unhappy “endings” have value if they help me know Him more.
Excerpted with permission from Jesus Doesn’t Care About Your Messy House by Dana K. White, copyright Dana K. White.
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Your Turn
God promises to be with you no matter what! We’re not promised happy “endings”, but we’re guaranteed His presence. Isn’t that the best news? ~ Devotionals Daily