Messy Room, Messy Heart
The messier my life, the messier my room.
I first noticed that trend in college. I’d like to think it’s pretty justifiable. When you’re busy, you don’t have time to deal with the mess and/or you’re barely there to notice it. It’s embarrassing how bad I let my room get Freshman year. But come Junior year, I was officially an upperclassman, which made me feel like I needed to start getting my life together. An easy place to start was my room.
Cleaning soon became a means of therapy and the easiest thing to cross off my to-do list. Aside from folding/hanging clothes, I actually enjoy cleaning now. But it was so much easier when I just had a room; now I have a whole apartment to keep clean. I try to keep my living room and dining area clean because that makes up the bulk of my place and that’s what my guests see. If my room is ever in a bad state, all I have to do is close my bedroom door and no one would never know.
This summer was crazy busy, and my whole apartment felt the repercussions of that. Even my living room looked like it needed some TLC. Last week, I was finally able to clean everything but my room. My room was a DISASTER. I had a giant mountain of (clean) clothes forming next to my bed that I inconveniently dug through every morning just to find something to wear.
I used to be able to live like that, but I’m a changed woman and that just stresses me out now.
Last week, I was fed up with seeing the Mt. Kilimanjaro of clothes next to my bed but I also didn’t feel like dealing with it, so I grabbed my clothes and dumped them into my closet.
And that’s where they still are to this day.
(The cover photo of this post is a real-time picture of my closet.)
As I was digging through my clothes one morning trying to find a specific black shirt but getting lost in all the black articles of clothing I own, I had a moment where I remembered the self-diagnosed correlation of the messiness of my room to the messiness of my life. (I also realized that I really need to add more color to my wardrobe but that’s irrelevant and beside the point). In that moment, the correlation wasn’t between the messiness of my room to my life. It was between the messiness of my room to my heart.
I could barely read that last sentence back without mocking myself, so it’s okay if you rolled your eyes. I mean - let’s be real - 10/10 times, a messy room is just a messy room. It ain’t that deep. But God went there and used the mess that was hidden in my closet to reveal the mess that was hidden in my heart.
God knows what’s going on in our hearts better than we do. (Thank goodness. Cuz yo girl needs help sometimes.) Psalms 139:3-4 (TPT) says, “You are so intimately aware of me, Lord. You read my heart like an open book…”
I’ve always known that God cares about our hearts (1 Sam. 16:7), but it’s another thing for Him to KNOW it. This means that He really recognizes and understands the inner-workings of our hearts - the things that make it come alive, the things that make it break, the things that make it skip a beat, the memories we hold close, and the areas that we neglect because we don’t feel like dealing with it…
One of the verses I used in my last post, “When in Drought” said, “But I, God search the heart and examine the mind. I get to the heart of the human. I get to the root of things...” (Jeremiah 17:7-8)
This verse in Jeremiah refers to the Lord knowing our motives and our heart behind our actions. To me, this shows the deep care and interest that the Lord has for us. He isn’t content with looking at things at the surface level; He wants to get to the heart of it.
Sometimes I wish He wouldn’t do that because it’s so much easier to stay at the surface. I never realized how often I put blanket statements on my feelings, never intending to do anything about it except for point it out. I kinda did it in the last post when I said, “My feelings may have been numb and my heart tired and broken…”
I was able to recognize what I was feeling, which is a win all on its own (cuz it took me a while to get there). But the Lord has been prompting me to go deeper than that. The next step towards complete freedom and healing is letting the Lord help us get to the root of those feelings - to all the why’s.
The roots of those things are usually the mess we keep in our closets.
Sometimes we knowingly dumped everything in there, hoping we never have to see it again. And other times, it’s mess that accumulated without us even knowing. But praise the Lord that He is “intimately aware” of us and cares enough to shine light on those places. My friend said this to me once - “The Lord never reveals something in your heart to just leave you to deal with it on your own. He reveals to heal.” Even when others can’t see the mess (and even when you can’t see it), He wants to bring healing to those hidden places.
Externally, everything can look good.
This would be the living room/dining area - the places people can see.
Meanwhile, internally, things can be a straight dump.
But just like I can with my room, you can easily shut the door so no one would ever know.
And when you get tired of feeling some type of way or tired of looking at the mess, you can shove everything in the closet (like I did with my clothes). That way, it feels like it’s dealt with.
But sooner or later, you’ve gotta open up your closet and deal with the mess. Otherwise, it will eventually spill out of the closet.
That literally happened this morning with my clothes.
But as I was digging through the mountain of clothes getting all these epiphanies, the Lord reminded me that I was never meant to live this way. He doesn’t want any hidden messes stored away in our hearts. He wants us to live healed and free, not bound to past hurts or rejections or fears.
Isaiah 53:5 (AMPC) says, “...the chastisement needful to obtain peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes that wounded Him we are made whole.”
Psalm 147:3 (AMPC) says, “He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds [curing their pains and their sorrows].”
I’ve used these verses in past posts and love them so much because they are declarations of healing and freedom from bondage from our past, from fears and insecurities we can’t seem to shake, and from hurts that we refuse to let go of.
This is the promise of wholeness in the midst of brokenness that we haven’t fully dealt with (or haven’t known how to deal with).
Like with cleaning up any mess, you’ve just gotta pick a place to start.
And the place I chose to start was simply inviting God into my closet - the abandoned/closed off places of my heart that have gotten a little crusty.
And the rest of the way is still going to require a bit of dirty work. But from experience I can confidently say that it’s 100x easier with the Lord than without Him.
He is holding my hand through every step of my healing process, and He gives me motivation when I feel tempted to just quit and close the dang closet door again. Everyone’s process looks different, but across the board, it requires each one of us to take intentional steps towards healing. ***And sometimes that means talking things through with a friend, mentor, pastor, or counselor. If you need help getting connected to people, I know friends who can hook you up! Please don’t hesitate to ask people for help, because identifying the roots of things can be really hard, and thankfully, God gave us access to resources and community that can help with that.***
If you’ve got some mess to take care of, you’re in good company.
Let’s encourage each other to do the hard things, to get our hands dirty, and to shine His light into every area of our lives.
“He called us out of darkness to experience His marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9)
Nothing hidden. Nothing left in the dark.
Finally taking care of the messy room and the messy heart.