What's In Your Purse???

Some of my favorites.  Yes, this is the purse I just cleaned out.
Can you imagine carrying around that purse, FULL?

Every so often my husband will ask me for a paper that we have misplaced.  I will go about looking for it and I usually end up cleaning out my purse because we all know that a women's purse becomes her filing cabinet at times.  This morning was no different.  We needed to find Henry's registration form for preschool and I went to my purse.  Not there.  But it did give me the opportunity to clean out my purse.

My son in law asked me if women have purses to carry their stuff in or every one's stuff in.  Yes, my purse was full of receipts (like 10 from the grocery store, you know the big ones), church bulletins, medicine, makeup, hair ties, jewelry, the bottom was covered in change, and of course I had the essentials like wallet, checkbook, glasses (reading and sun), static spray, mouth spray, cough drops, pens and pencils, erasers…whew thats a lot of stuff for one purse.  No wonder it was so heavy.  But it is all clean now.

I always tell myself that I am not going to let my purse get so cluttered any more.  I do well for a week, maybe two and then its back to filing all the stuff.  I get in a hurry and don't even think about cleaning it out and you know what they say, "out of sight, out of mind".  I find that I am that way about a lot of things.  It contributes to my clutter in my house and the clutter in the trunk of my car.  I just put things in a room and the only thing I am doing is moving the clutter so I don't have to look at it…out of sight, out of mind.  But then there is that day I can no longer take it or I need to use the room and I start de-cluttering.  The whole time I am beating myself up for letting it get this bad and vowing to never let it happen again.

I think we are like this a lot in our spiritual lives.  We put off the reading of the word and praying only to find out that we are unprepared when we need to draw on it's strength in times of need.  We know the scripture, Thy word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against thee. Psalm 119:11, unfortunately we haven't hid anything in our hearts because we neglected cleaning out the clutter.  We have filled that room in our hearts with other things and now we really need it.

 I had so many unnecessary items in my purse.  I had tons of used wrappers and Kleenex, why didn't I just throw these items away when I was finished with them?  Instead, I stored them, carried them around, pushed them aside…crazy when I know that I would never use this trash again.  My purse was so heavy that I hated picking it up…speaks volumes about how our lives get so filled with unnecessary things that we are heavy burdened, unable to get up or don't want to get up.  Our hearts are full of unforgiveness, bitterness, disillusionment, hurts from the past, fears of the future…we are holding on to things that we should have thrown out a long time ago.  We are so full of the past that we have no where to put the future.  TIME FOR A CLEANING!

Only carry the necessary items in your "purse".  De-clutter your heart and mind.  Make sure you have the Word of God in there.  Jesus said, Take my yoke upon you and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart; you shall find rest unto your souls.  My yoke is easy and my burden is light.
 -Matthew 11:29 & 30.  I would rather carry His yoke than my own.

Today clean the clutter.  This will only add to your BLESSED LIFE.