HOARDING OF THE MIND
A recent poll showed that 90% of doctor’s visits are related to stress. The mortality due to stress-related illness is alarming. Emotional stress is a major contributing factor to the six leading causes of death in the United States: cancer, coronary heart disease, accidental injuries, respiratory disorders, cirrhosis of the liver and suicide. Wow!
I am sure you have been stressed many times in your life. I know I sure have. Recently I was stressed trying to find someone to help me with my taxes. I have several things going on in the next couple of weeks and wanted to get it done. I will have people over for either a devotional, play bunco or a teen girls class. (One good thing is that I will have a clean home, having so much around the same time as each other!) I also am planning towards the event in mid-April, I go to each year in Wichita, where I have a booth to sell my books. So, I also had to throw into the mix getting my taxes done by the deadline! The feeling when friends helped me and I got them filed without costing me an arm and a leg, was thankfulness and peace! I was able to take a deep cleansing breath. But guess what, there is always something else we can stress about, around the corner, just waiting for us.
I have mentioned before, that my daughter and I love the hoarding shows on tv. (I think part of what we like about them is, we look around at our homes and think, oh, maybe our home doesn’t look so bad after all!) We look at their homes in disgust and unbelief! How can the people live like that? They have hoarded so much stuff that they can’t even see the floor of their homes and they only have a small path to walk on. The smell is unbearable. Then, when professionals come to help them clean out their clutter, they want to keep things that have rat droppings on them or they get stalled in the process because they want to look at everything that has been hidden for years, sometimes decades! Stress starts to overwhelm them to the point they shut down and want to keep it all.
Isn’t that the same way we are about hoarding of our minds? We hold onto so many things, that eventually they take over our minds and hearts. We zero into something that is stressing us out. We hold onto that stress until it takes over our minds to the point that we want to keep-hoard that stress. We forget what is truly important in this life on earth. We forget the reality that we are only on a short journey on this earth. Eternity waits for all of us. There are so many things we can hoard-hold onto, that tend to mess with our minds and hearts. Some of them are: unforgiveness-worry-arguments-anger-stress-depression-money issues-loneliness-lack of confidence-lack of time-selfishness-negativity. There are so many other things you might add to that list. Did you recognize yourself in any of those mind hoarding things? Well, I have held onto all of them at one time or the other, and some of them at the same time!
So how do we release and throw away all those things that we hoard in our minds. Well, we first have to realize we are holding onto all those things. Of course, our next thing we need to do is pray to God to help us see what we need to do. We sometimes need to reach out to someone we trust, to help us see the reality of what we are doing to ourselves. We need to go to God’s word that “speaks” to us giving us insight into what to do and how to find peace.
Genesis chapters 37-50, tell us the story of Joseph. We have all read about the tough road he had to follow, which was none of his doing. He was thrown in a pit and sold by his jealous brothers to Potiphar, who was an Egyptian. He was framed by Potiphar’s wife that he had tried to rape her and he was thrown into prison unjustly where he was forgotten. There are so many attributes, from the list above that he could have hoarded in his mind and heart. He had been unjustly mistreated beyond his control. But the scriptures tell us that God was with Joseph and after years he ended up rising to leadership power. Because of this power, he saved the Jewish nation from starvation in the famine. In Genesis 45:5 he tells his brothers, “…God sent me before you to preserve life.” Also in Genesis 50:20 he tells his brothers, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.” God had a plan within Joseph’s life to bring a better future for the Jewish people. Joseph could have held onto all the normal feelings his life could have hoarded in his mind and heart. If he had, the future of the Jewish nation would have been a whole different story. I honestly don’t know if I could have been so forgiving as he was. Do you? Do you think he had a bit of stress in his life?
We spend so much wasted time holding onto those things in our mind that we cannot release! We step on them and mash them down into our hearts. We are headed down a very stuff filled road. Not seeing the obvious and only seeing what our minds have been trained to see for so long. All those things in our minds we hold onto, only threaten to swallow us up into the hoarding of the mind, showing us a distorted reality.
Try to see yourself like God does: loved-saved-honored-blessed-more than the things of this earth. Don’t start or keep holding onto things in your heart that are negative, causing hoarding of them, and you just don’t think you can get rid of because they have intertwined within us to the point of hoarding in our mind. God does not want us to live like that. Neither should you. If you recognize that you are hoarding in your mind, you have become stressed, reach out to God-the scriptures-to a trusted friend-a trained Christian professional. God has told us how to rid ourselves of what we thought were treasures!
Matthew 6:19-21 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Till next time!
Keela