Spring Cleaning

I woke up this morning to the sound of birds singing, letting me know that spring time is finally here. I love hearing those little sparrows singing because it means that the sun is going to be shining and the weather is going to be great; the air a little crisper, the grass a little greener and the sky a more brilliant blue. Spring is here so maybe it’s a great time to do a little spring cleaning!  

There are two types of “spring cleaning”. The first one is where you clear out all the stuff in your attic, pack up all the stuff you don’t need for charity and throw away all the stuff that is worthless. Those are worthy chores for sure and this is a good time to do them, but there is also a different type of spring cleaning you can do, the kind where you clear out all the stuff in your “emotional attic”…meaning your heart.

I guess you could say our hearts are like an emotional attic where we store both love and pain. Those two things shouldn’t go together but quite often they do and I think it’s because when we were created we were given the awesome ability to love, but at the same time we were also given the ability to make choices, and sometimes when we make bad choices…we cause ourselves pain.

But that pain doesn’t have to last.  We have to learn how to ask for forgiveness, believe that we are forgiven and then (and this is the hard part)….forgive ourselves. I’ll give you a real life example.

When I was 16 years old I was living on my own in a small country town, working part-time after school at a gas station out by the highway. I made less than minimum wage and was barely scraping by. One Friday night I was working alone and the head mechanic was supposed to relieve me at 6:00pm. But he called and said he wasn’t coming in and that I had to stay and close the place by myself at midnight. I was tired from a long week, hungry and cold and just wanted to go home. Plus the mechanic was a horrible man, an alcoholic who was downright mean, always getting into bar fights and always yelling at me to do the dirty work. The later it got, the angrier I got, and when midnight finally arrived, I helped myself to a $20.00 bill out of the cash register to buy myself dinner on the way home. I justified it to myself as “overtime pay” but there was no justification. It was wrong on every level and as soon as I got home I regretted it. I have regretted it ever since and feel that it was one of the worst things I have ever done in my life. Obviously if I am relating this story to you, it means I still remember it, but fortunately a few years back I did some “spring cleaning” and decided to forgive myself. I forgave myself because I realized that making that mistake at such a young age taught me a valuable lesson that has guided my life ever since, making me a better man. I have not and will not make that mistake again!

If you’re carrying around some pain from mistakes made in the past, now would be a good time to listen to those little birds singing. They’re singing to remind us that if God can care about something as insignificant as a sparrow, then he certainly cares enough about us to forgive our mistakes…and if He is willing to forgive us, then who are we to argue with Him!

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny?

Yet not one of them will fall to the ground outside your Father’s care,

and even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.  

So don’t be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

~ Matthew 10: 29-31