Red Wednesday's Widsom - Healing the Clutter

When I started Home Touched in 1987, I saw myself as a traditional nurse taking on a very nontraditional nursing role. My focus was to bring preventative health into the home and/or work setting.

For more than 25 years, families and individuals have been welcoming me into their very personal and private lives. I have been blessed with the awesome opportunity and responsibility to be actively and intimately involved with the day to day challenges that people face at home and at work. My job is to help people examine their habits and behaviors, as well as their thoughts and feelings. This is an important part of the assessment process that helps us in developing and implementing a practical plan to live with less clutter and more simplicity.

The needs in families and businesses are numerous. And in my business, those needs get manifested over a period of many years and pretty much in this order:

Is there a need related to physical, mental, or emotional challenges? I serve as a nurse.
Is there a need for food? I serve as a caterer or dietician.
Is there a need for entertainment? I serve as a party planner.
Is there a need for home accenting? I serve as a decorator.
Is there a need for cleaning? I serve as a maidservant.
Is there disorder within the family, home or business? I serve as an organizer and manager.
Is there an upcoming move? I provide the team from start to finish.
Are there relational issues? I serve as a coach.
Are there spiritual issues? I serve as a touch from God.

Regardless of a client’s needs, I help them to lessen the clutter that can lead to illness, accidents, and breakups.

Because of Red Wednesday’s Wisdom, you have heard bits and pieces of my own cluttered story. In the earlier years of my business, it was a very shocking revelation when I realized that the closets needing to be cleaned out and organized belonged to me and not one of my client’s! Those closets had been so well hidden that I didn’t even know about them! They were buried deep within the chambers of my mind and heart and I had stuffed them with a lifetime of messed up relationships. In my head I thought I needed to be perfect and in control. In my heart I felt unloved, unworthy, and betrayed. I was a cluttered mess!

WARNING: Perfectionism looks like order on the outside but it is a symptom of being very cluttered up on the inside.

When I questioned who was going to nurture and care for me, as I did for my clients, I made the only turn I knew to make. I turned to the God who I had learned about all of my life - The Great Organizer and Healer Himself!

Red Wednesday’s Wisdom is about the fire and power of God’s Holy Spirit being at work in our lives. So I want to share with you what the Holy Spirit has taught me as He has guided me, worked with me, and healed me through the clutter of my own life. He wants to do in your life what He has done for me. My prayer is that you will stretch yourself and remain open to His guidance and direction. He wants to bless you every day for the rest of your life as you tackle any problem or issue on a day to day basis. I refer to those problems and issues as clutter.

Clutter is something we can all visualize and relate to as we think about or see the daily pile up or build up of papers, mail, homework, laundry, dishes toys, etc.

It was through my organizational part of my business that I learned how to broaden the concept of clutter so that it encompassed every aspect of our lives. By defining clutter as anything that piles up or builds up, I hope you will begin to see the simplicity of approaching life with this whole new perspective and understanding, so you can better care for yourself and others.

I have learned that we are all in need of healing and recovery from something, and I call that something clutter. We will all need that healing until the day that we die. How much healing we want is totally up to us, but I can tell you that God the Father wants to give us way more than we ask Him for. God wants to use Red Wednesday’s Wisdom to bring you the healing that you don’t even know you need. He wants to draw you into a deeper and more personal relationship with Him through His Son Jesus, and His Holy Spirit. God desires to connect with you on a very personal level so you can experience His healing touch and be equipped with the power of His Holy Spirit. Jesus says in John 14:26 “But when the Father sends the Counselor, as my representative – and by the Counselor I mean the Holy Spirit – he will teach you everything and will remind you of everything I myself have told you.”

This coming week, make the investment to believe in the promise of this Scripture and see the return it personally brings into you life!

The lyrics to this song called Welcome Home, by Shaun Groves reflects the clutter that is inside all of us. See how its words touch you and speak to you.

Take, me, make me
All You want me to be
That's all I'm asking, all I'm asking

Welcome to this heart of mine
I've buried under prideful vines
Grown to hide the mess I've made
Inside of me
Come decorate, Lord

Open up the creaking door
And walk upon the dusty floor
Scrape away the guilty stains
Until no sin or shame remain
Spread Your love upon the walls
And occupy the empty halls
Until the man I am has faded
No more doors are barricaded

Come inside this heart of mine
It's not my own
Make it home
Come and take this heart and make it
All Your own
Welcome home

Take a seat, pull up a chair
Forgive me for the disrepair
And the souvenirs from floor to ceiling
Gathered on my search for meaning
Every closet's filled with clutter
Messes yet to be discovered
I'm overwhelmed, I understand
I can't make this place all that You can

I took the space that You placed in me
Redecorated in shades of greed
And I made sure every door stayed locked
Every window blocked, and still You knocked

Take me, make me
All You want me to be
That's all I'm asking, all I'm asking