Deciding What to Keep

Deciding What to Keep

My husband and I recently had our dining room, kitchen, and laundry room remodeled. Oh, my. What an adventure. In the midst of preparing for, living through, and reorganizing afterwards, we had decisions to make decisions. One decision was deciding what to keep, and what was no longer needed.

As I went through the process of deciding what to keep, I thought of my mom. In the mid-1990s my mother’s house was hit by lightning and burned to the ground. Fortunately, she wasn’t home at the time. Living in the middle of a South Georgia pine forest, meant putting out the fire was challenging. Even given the volunteer fire fighters best efforts.

Following the fire, my mom had the chore of deciding what to keep from the little that remained.

One decision she knew for certain was that she wasn’t about to leave her property in the country and move to town. Instead, she purchased a double-wide mobile home. She had it placed on the land that had been in her family for generations.

On weekends, my husband and I drove the four hours from our home in Florida to help Mom get resettled. One thing we did after her new home arrived, was go through the few belongings that survived the fire. We helped her go through the process of deciding what to keep and what to throw away.

Opinions Differ on What to Keep

Funny how what one person treasures, another finds little use for.

Have you noticed that? Something we wouldn’t even consider getting rid of, someone else sees no purpose in keeping. That’s how it was with me and my mom.

I have vivid memories of sweating beneath the very hot July heat, as my husband and I washed various kitchen items that survived. As we washed, my mother, aunt, and uncle sat chatting inside the air-conditioned living room.

Whenever I found something I felt was beyond saving, I had to clear it with Mom first. I’d hold the item up to the sliding glass window, and she would shake her head yes or no.

Before I washed the dull, long-bladed knife which had been around since before I was born, I knew for sure Mom would agree it needed to be tossed.

The point at the end of the knife broke off long ago when Mom used it to pry something open, instead of using a screwdriver. Spots of rust dotted both sides of the blade. Surely, she would agree. There was no need to keep the thing.

Still, I knew I needed to get her approval before I threw it away.

Keep

I held the knife to the slider. Mom shook her head no. 

Not satisfied with her answer, I opened the slider and explained the obvious reasons why I should not waste time washing something so useless.

“I started housekeeping with that knife,” was all she said.

And I proceeded to wash the knife. Shaking my head and grumbling the entire time.

I’m not sure how often Mom used that knife after that, probably never, but I do know the dull, broken, long-bladed, rust-spotted knife stayed in her kitchen until the day we moved her into a nursing home decades later.

Deciding What to Keep in our Spiritual Life

As I pondered this memory, I thought of how sometimes, we struggle with deciding what to keep and what to throw away in our spiritual life.

Sometimes we hold onto beliefs we learned years earlier in our Christian walk which, upon closer inspection and deeper biblical study, are not scriptural.

Maybe we believe certain things because our parents believed them.

Or we heard a preacher say something once which we kinda still believe, but aren’t really sure.

It could be that some author somewhere, wrote something people talked about, so it must have some basis for truth, right?

Your Turn

When deciding what to keep in our spiritual life, instead of relying on things we’ve heard others say, how about we search the scriptures and discover God’s truth for ourselves?

What say we become students of the Word to gain a clearer understanding, and once we gain that understanding, apply God’s truth to our lives?

Instead of deciding to keep using a dull, broken, long-bladed, rust-spotted, incomplete understanding of the Truth, which we should have discarded years ago, let’s determine to sharpen our learning so that our knowledge leads us to a fuller understanding of what to keep and what to throw away.

Is there anything around your home you’ll admit you hang onto that you shouldn’t?

I know that even after the purge we went through during our remodel, there are items we need to take a closer look at while deciding what to keep.

I wish you well.

Sandy

Photos courtesy Pixabay.