Finishing
another edit of a screenplay, so I’m turning my attention to some other projects,
which have languished long on my to-do list.
I’ve
been crawling around in one of the attics this week. We have three. Thankfully,
one of them is empty.
For
those of you who have spotless attics swept clean with boxes carefully labeled,
you’ll want to skip this post. It’s not for you.
But
if open cardboard boxes, overflowing TJMaxx bags, and loose debris tumble
overhead in your home, you’ll understand.
How’d
so much stuff get up there?
Try
home schooling for eight years. So far, I’ve counted five bins of schoolbooks.
There’s probably more, because I’m only a third of the way through this attic.
Add to that the kid’s art projects I couldn’t let go. It’s just always been
easier to poke stuff I didn’t know what to do with in the attic and deal with
it later. Later has arrived. Can you say procrastinate?
Through
the years, it was a no brainer to carry odds and ends to Goodwill--clothing and
linens to a ministry for the homeless, but what about that box of costumes my
kids wore a thousand days, so tattered no one else would want them? I can still
see my son in the cowboy chaps and my daughter in the yellow tutu.
I
know, I know. Our memories are not tied up in our things. But, right now, this
Mama with the starkly just empty nest can’t take some of this to the dump.
Still,
after many hours yesterday, I almost filled up the recycle bin, added to our
load for the landfill, and crated several boxes to carry off to various places.
I
have much work ahead squinting and poking around in the darkness, while trying
to avoid roofing nails overhead (sad to report no overhead insulation in this
old house).
Some
of the blasts from the past brought me to tears.
A
message from a long ago Valentines Day--
A
project from Sunday School—
“I will give you the treasures of darkness
And hidden wealth of secret places,
So that you may know that it is I,
The Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name”(Isaiah 45:3 NASB).
And hidden wealth of secret places,
So that you may know that it is I,
The Lord, the God of Israel, who calls you by your name”(Isaiah 45:3 NASB).
Way
up there in the darkness, in the midst of a hard project, God called me out
through these treasured messages of grace and love from little kids long grown
into young adulthood.
Makes
me think of another dark time just after I’d had breast cancer surgery when I
battled fear one night until the early hours of morning. The thought, “You’re
going to die,” hounded and hounded. Then, just before dawn, God’s love and peace
overwhelmed me—a treasure in the darkness.
“I’m
absolutely convinced that nothing—nothing living or dead, angelic or demonic,
today or tomorrow, high or low, thinkable or unthinkable—absolutely nothing can
get between us and God’s love because of the way that Jesus our Master has
embraced us” (Romans 8:38-39 The Message).
And
from my own experience, I know that cancer and dark attics can’t get between God’s
love and us either.
Praying
His treasures for you in your own dark times, friends.