Jesus helped me clean my desk! (I am free!)

Note: I’ve edited this post from the original. I hope it encourages you!

I always admired a former colleague's ability to leave for the day with clear horizontal surfaces, but I’ve had a pile on my desk as long as I’ve HAD a desk.

You know what I’m talking about, don’t you. The training material you think you’ll refer back to one day. The “50% off” offers that come in the mail. The little scraps of paper that have random notes that have nowhere else to go. I’ve actually got piles at home too, imagine that. In fact, I used to say I had a “pile-it program.”

Jesus helped me clean my desk. It's had a stream of never-ending piles on it since I got it 10 years ago.

Every so often, I’d get motivated enough to spend 25 minutes “cleaning my desk,” and I’d get maybe half of it put away, or even 80%, but never, have I ever fully accomplished this task. I run out time or I run out of ambition. Either way, I just take everything that’s left and pile it up again. Every so often, I might take a stack, stick it in a box, and stash it in the closet. But then I’ve just got a bunch of piles hidden in the closet, right?

Then I had a session with a local church's Freedom Ministry and actually got to the root of what has made it so difficult to finish things, including getting my desk cleared of clutter. After identifying and renouncing the lie that "I can't finish things, " the leader encouraged me to ask God where Jesus was... I pictured myself, sitting at my desk, facing that pile. I tried to visualize Jesus as a man who would need a man-sized space, but I couldn't picture him behind me, no matter how hard I tried. I also knew he wasn't on the other side of the desk divider. Then, I laughed because Jesus was sitting on (and, somehow, in) the pile that has never completely gone away.

The leader laughed too because that's the image that came to her mind as well. In that moment, I knew I could actually push the whole pile into the trash can if I wanted to. But I also knew that if I wanted to go through the pile, Jesus would help me make all the little decisions that go into the process of sorting through clutter.

Jesus sat with me as I sorted through a pile that represented so much more than just random sticky notes and expired training fliers. It represented the burdens, large and small, that I've been holding onto, some of which were important at the time, but no longer serve me, and others that I was never meant to hold onto in the first place.

Thank you, Jesus. We did it, and I am FREE!!!