Cluttered Corners

We are in the beginning stages of a 4 month room transition in our house.  

The boys want their own rooms, and for momma's sanity this really needs to happen before summer break.  That means we have to go through the room they now share and divide up all the stuff.  We also have to clean out Erik's office and my "extra storage" room as this will be JT's new room.  Much of the stuff in the office/extra storage will need to go into the basement or master bedroom which means both of those areas need to be organized and gone through so that all the stuff has someplace to go.  UGH!

So every day I try to go through/clean out some little area, this is WAY to big a project to tackle in one weekend.  Here is what I have discovered about myself…

I am a stuffer.  

I tend to "stuff" all the "stuff" I don't want to deal with into a corner.  There are advantages to this.  The stuff is not out and about laying around the middle of the house for all to see, it doesn't get into people's way, the room generally looks fairly tidy when you just quick glance in, and I haven't had to part with anything that I may need one day and now regret getting rid of.  

The problem… every corner of my house is full of STUFF!  Stuff I don't need and no longer want, stuff I have never quit figured out what to do with but for some reason didn't want to part with, stuff that I might need someday (I know it's been years and I haven't needed it - but I might…someday…), stuff that someone once considered a treasure but now it's just junk, stuff I didn't want to deal with at the time so I just stuffed it into a corner.  

It has made me realize that I also do this internally.  Heaven knows there is plenty of stuff going on inside me that I just don't want to deal with, past sins, unforgiveness, false pride, anger bugs, selfishness that refuses to go away, you name it!  I understand why I do this.  It's all stuff I don't want other people to see, stuff I don't want to get in the way of what I am trying to do and who I want to be, stuff that if people really saw they would realize my life wasn't so neat and tidy, stuff I'm just not ready to get rid of.  It is all stuff I really probably need to deal with, I just don't want to.  So I stuff.  I stuff it into the corner of my mind, the corner of my heart all those little corners inside of me, where if I just glance in I won't notice it.  Can you relate to this at all?

But this is what I am afraid of now that I have made this new discovery.  If Christ is supposed to be the cornerstone, the foundation on which we live (and the Bible says he is in Ephesians 2:19-20), if Christ is the cornerstone, what happens when I can't even see the corner?  When I push so much stuff into the corners of my heart, mind, spirit, that I can't even see our cornerstone, trouble is sure to follow.  

I guess it's time to start cleaning house.  And not my physical house this time.  I want to see my corners, I want to know what's there, clean them out, and see my beautiful cornerstone.