May I share you with my excitement from when I stumbled across the cable series “Hoarders” several years ago? I was a bit behind with this binge trend but once I arrived, I was captivated. I could not turn away.

What grown adult needs a collection of 500 clowns? Why leave 100’s of those five cent soda bottles piled high in your kitchen corner? That is a lot of money at the redemption center. What almost sent me over was the edge was the house with over 1200 rats, but for some reason, I could not turn away from these glimpses into the lives of other people’s hoards.

Over the years, I have had several teaching peers with similar teacher hoards. While I love having the supplies I need for activities, there is something excessive about 150 boxes of broken crayons, 100’s trade books, or markers that do not mark.

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Then there are a few of my students. “Yes, I really do need all 30 colors of pens for class today.” “Are you sure you do not love my collection of 60 lizards?”…paper clip chains, gun wrapper origami birds, half inch pencil stubs.

In my world, I purge regularly. I feel out of control and stressed amidst clutter. This has driven away many a hoard over my lifetime.

Recently, a student’s locker brought me back to the affect a hoard can have on one’s ability to function effectively. This particular student has such a sweet spirit but is unable to find pencils almost daily, loses papers on a regular basis, and often finds himself overwhelmed by the clutter in his life.

My Spiritual Hoard

While I do well to purge with physical items, I will admit to the struggle of purging spiritually. My mind often holds a massive hoard of inaccurate teachings, cultural misleadings and my own creation of how my faith should look. These mental hoards keep me from being effective in my faith and leave me frustrated and often overwhelmed with little sense of purpose.

I hesitate to clean out these mental collections for various reasons must mainly because mental purging takes time (a lot of time) and patience. As in all cleaning attempts, one has to be able to determine what to put in the “trash” bag, “donate” box and “keep” pile. In mental purging, I find it more difficult to make these determinations.

Today, I would encourage you to start cleaning out your collection of inaccurate ideas about your faith and God. Start with this truth.

God loves you.

Truly sit with this idea. Ask God to show you what in your life keeps you from fulling embracing and living in the truth of this statement.

Cleaning out your mind to truly accept this idea may take weeks. Be patient with the process. Just like my middle school student, learning to manage and sort though the many items in his locker takes time and patience.

Today, he made it to class with a pencil.

Today, you know that you are loved. The purge has begun.

“I have loved you, my people, with an everlasting love. With unfailing love, I have drawn you to myself” (Jeremiah 31:3, NLT).