Good Morning,
I pray that the day is finding you well.

Garage sales

God woke me up this morning and we talked about the importance of garage sales.

My wife is a consummate garage saler, actually she is a consummate buyer of other peoples stuff. She is quite good at it and finds many treasures. She finds things that one would never guess would have ever been bought at a garage sale. My wife is unique in the fact that when she finds a piece that is an actual antique or she knows is worth much more than the asking price she will talk with the seller and ask them if they know what they are selling. Many times they will decide not to sell and keep the item and thank her for pointing out the importance of the piece, sometimes they will sell it anyway.

When we first moved to our town my wife and I went house hunting and while there where many houses that where very nice there wasn’t one house that we found that really fit us, so we decided to build. During the building process I talked with my wife and we decided that she could design the house and I would be happy as long as I could design the garage, she was good with that.

Time went by and as she acquired more stuff things from the house migrated to the garage, this was a cause of anxiety for me. By the end of this summer the only thing that I could fit in my garage was my motorcycle, I had a little spot of floor left between rolls of carpet, Christmas lawn decorations, a fake fireplace…

I was going up north to work with the camp, and to preach at the church. Before I left, Laurie my wife, said, “I am thinking of having a garage sale.” something she had never done. She was a buyer of stuff not a seller of stuff.

I said, “Great!”

When I got home the garage door was open, Laurie was standing in the garage smiling, and it was empty. Everything that was left had a place and everything was in its place. The first thought that crossed my mind was how glad I was that I had ridden my motorcycle because she could have sold that too!

I have my garage back.

Yesterday I was talking with a friend. He is someone that started out as one of my spiritual directees and over the years we have become good friends. He is in Colorado now and he was telling me how he and his team went to a Jesuit monastery for a retreat, it was a silent retreat. This type of retreat was the first for my friend and it was quite stretching. One of the things that a monk had told him was the importance of saying goodbye to yesterday.

I am not sure how this monk told him that if it was a silent retreat, I will have to ask him.

This morning God woke me up asking me the question, “What things are you holding onto that you should let go? Maybe you need to have a garage sale of the heart.”

I thought about what He said.

What things are we holding onto that keep us stuck in the past?

What thoughts are we holding onto that keep us stuck in the past?

If we focus our thoughts on all the what-ifs, coulda, shoulda, woulda’s in life we are never really present to the amazing things that God is doing in our lives today.

The importance of saying goodbye to yesterday, not forgetting about yesterday but merely saying goodbye to yesterday so we can give a proper hello to today.

Having a garage sale of the heart, to forgive others, to forgive yourself, to let yesterday go is the only way to being truly present to Christ today.

Something to think about.

Blessings,