Cleaning the junk

Spring has sprung in our neck of the woods and this past weekend I decided that it was finally time to clean out the van.

Here's my confession: I do not clean our van during the winter.
Sure, there are half hearted attempts to pick up random food wrappers or collect a shoe here and a sock there (our youngest has issues with keeping her socks and shoes on anytime we go somewhere) but the icy cold weather keeps me from doing a full blown vacuum, dust, window washing overhaul until the spring hits.

Is that gross?
Um yup. It's totally gross.

This weekend I found a half eaten fruit leather stuck to the carpet under my three year old's seat.
I discovered a box of pizza that still had a few pieces in it (left over from my son's pizza day at school) stashed between the seat in the back. {shudder}
Countless fish cracker crumbs scattered EVERYWHERE with yucky pieces of McDonalds fries mixed in for fun.
Random sweaters, socks, mismatched shoes, toys and food wrappers covering every square inch....
I'm not exaggerating. I really should have taken pictures.
It took forever just to get the van emptied in order to do the real deep down clean.

My heart gets full of junk too. It stores hurts and disappointments. It is littered with regrets, rejections, worries and fears. It gets cluttered with all the lies I've chosen to believe.

And just like the junk in my van I tend to let these things build up in the winter (during seasons when I feel far away from God) rather than come to Him I simply allow the junk to pile up.

Right now, I'm in a spring season with God. It feels like my heart is being brought back to life. My dreams. My intimacy. My joy.
But in the beautiful warmth of spring I am beginning to see just how much I have allowed to clutter my heart over the cold winter years that I just walked through.

I've allowed the goldfish and the random socks to go ignored. The pizza and the wrappers have taken over.
To be honest, sometimes I did see them there but rather than give them to God right away I'd quickly go inside trying to escape the icy winds. Easier to hide inside where it's warm than take a few minutes in the cold to keep up on the dirt of my heart. Easier to tell myself I can do it on my own. Or that those things don't really bother me. I am strong after all.
Other times though I was oblivious to it. Much like the state of my van. When you see something the same way for a long time you just get use to it. It just becomes normal...

That is until someone else sees it. If anyone even took the slightest step toward my yucky van I found myself grasping for wrappers and frantically wiping away crumbs.
If anyone could actually look inside and see the state of my heart I can only imagine the panic I would feel. The embarrassment.

I'm realizing that someone else IS looking. He sees it all and is showing me too. The good the bad and the ugly.

He is showing me that out of my heart flows life. And that if my heart is buried under a ever-growing pile of junk my life will reflect it.
My joy.
The words I speak.
The thoughts I think.
They all flow from the condition of my heart.

So, just as I cleaned out my van with a rag, a vacuum and a HUGE garbage bag, I am allowing God to clean out my heart.
I am surrendering it to Jesus.
I'm giving Him all my junk.
One piece at a time.
It is going to take awhile.
It won't be pleasant.
In fact it is already quite painful... seeing the ugly I have let in...

but with each wrapper I give him.
with every crumb I surrender
my heart is being made new.
And because of Him
it is becoming more and more beautiful...