When we talk about meeting with God, I usually picture Charlton Heston in The Ten Commandments.
Epic. He had a beard before beards were cool.
In the movie, Moses meets God on a mountain through a burning bush and an animated whirlwind that carves words into stone. It’s dramatic and unforgettable. If you’ve never seen it, consider this homework. It’s spectacular.
That’s never been my experience.
God has never spoken to me through fire or whirlwinds. He usually meets me in ordinary life and teaches me through what’s right in front of me.
For the last three months, that’s been moving boxes.
I love that God is the God of fiery mountains but also the God of cardboard.
How can a move take three months? Short version: we put our house up for sale, it didn’t sell as quickly as expected, we lived in an apartment for a few months, and now we’re finally in a house… with boxes everywhere.
My wife and I aren’t frequent movers. We lived in our last house for twenty years. We raised our daughter there. We were settled—and we had twenty years of stuff (which is the polite word for junk).
Moving forced us to face all of it.
Here are three things the move taught me:
We’re carrying more than we realize
When you move across several states, you have to touch everything you own. Every box. Every drawer.
It turns out—we own a lot.
None of it felt excessive on its own. A tool for one project. Clothes for next winter. Leftover paint. And my personal favorite: boxes of cables from every electronic device we’ve ever owned, kept “just in case.”
It adds up. And it’s heavy.
Decluttering means letting go
This move exposed my real definition of decluttering: relocating clutter.
Hide it in a closet. Tuck it into storage. Make the house look clean without actually getting rid of anything.
But real decluttering requires decisions. Things have to go. Sell them, donate them, or throw them away just don’t keep them.
Some old things don’t fit new places
We paid movers to bring our old couch from Ohio to Tennessee. Why buy a new one when the old one still works?
One problem: it doesn’t fit.
Neither does the printer table or the dresser. Things that were perfect for years suddenly aren’t right anymore.
They didn’t stop being good. They just don’t belong here.
It’s time for new.
My wife is thrilled.
My bank account… less so. 🙂
What a thrilled wife might look like.
Through all this, God’s been talking to me:
Sometimes we ask God to do something new while holding tightly to everything from the old.
We want fresh peace, renewed faith, and lighter hearts but we keep dragging boxes labeled just in case.
God doesn’t always meet us on mountains. Sometimes He meets us in the middle of a mess, asking gentle questions:
Do you still need this?
Is this helping you move forward?
What might happen if you finally let it go?
Decluttering isn’t about having less.
It’s about making room.
And sometimes, the most faithful thing we can do is set something down.
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