Right now, I am in the process of purging some of the things in my life that I have accumulated. I’m shooting for something more simplified, maybe even leaning towards minimalism, in theory. And I’m finding it very hard to do.

My life is complicated.

I don’t state that in a complaining fashion, because I know just how many different things I have going on in my life. Some I can control, others I cannot. My wife and I have a large family, with seven kids. A couple of them are in early adulthood, a couple of them are teens, or soon to be, and the rest are younger children. That fact alone ensure that we are busy, and that we live in a cluttered home.

I’m also in ministry. Every time I see something that might be a resource, I’m tempted to grab it and hold on to it. More on that in a moment.

My wife is also very frugal. She’s always thinking ahead, so if she sees a deal on something that we don’t need now, but will need later, it’s quite likely to be brought home and stored until we need it. She saves us a lot of money that way.

But I’m just a packrat. I hold on to things, especially if I think I might need it at a later point. We have so much stuff just sitting around, stacked here and there, filling the garage, the closets, and everywhere else we can put it. We need to purge this and eliminate a lot of it from our lives. So that’s what I have been doing.

I started with my office, and began sorting through some things that I have stored away in drawers, boxes and file cabinets. Lately, there hasn’t been much rhyme or reason to where I put stuff, I just put it away… somewhere. So I’ve been sorting through things as I have been working.

I started with my file cabinets. I found a lot of stuff that I had no idea I still even had. I had folders full of old newsletters from old churches, some of them more than 15 years old. I found files full of old classwork from my days at Ozark Christian College. Much of that I saved, such as my class notes, papers and reports, and stuff like that. But some of it, like vocabulary tests that were nothing more than a list of words down the page, I tossed.

I found old bills that I had filed away, including some bank statements from my first year out of high school. Those got shredded. I found tons of encouraging cards, notes and letters from friends in past ministries, as well as current. Those I saved.

So far, I have fully emptied one file cabinet, and have reduced the amount in another by quite a bit. And it feels good to be eliminating some of this from my life and my office space.

I’m both looking forward to, and dreading, getting to my garage…

But sometimes, we just need to go through stuff and throw some of it away. In the process of sorting through some of that stuff in my office, I came across a letter that was written to me several years ago. It was harsh and hateful, and full of meanness and unjustified criticism. And for some reason, I saved it.

As I opened it up and started reading it, realizing what it was, that old wound was ripped open again. I felt that old hurt as if it had just happened. I suspect it will take some time for that to heal again. I should have thrown that letter away years ago, but held on to it for some unknown reason.

It is now in the trash. That’s where it belongs. And that’s completely ok.

Sometimes, you just need to throw stuff away.

Question: When are you holding on to that you just need to throw away? What’s preventing you from doing so? You can leave a comment by clicking here.