One time long ago, I found my husband contentedly reading in bed, unknowingly wearing a paint-smattered art smock as a pajama top.
The children had been helping put clean laundry away, and Daddy’s old-shirt-turned-art-smock had ended up in his dresser.
“You know you’re wearing an art smock, right?” I asked.
He looked down and shrugged.
“It was in my drawer,” he said in defense. “You know, there are random socks and all kinds of stuff. It’s like a rummage sale in there!”
We laughed nonstop for a long time.
It was definitely time to clean out the dresser.
Time to clean out
Lent is a great time to do clean-outs — of our dressers, our closets, our storage rooms. And our hearts.
Like the trash — and treasures — we may find while cleaning out the nooks and crannies of our houses, what we find in our hearts is no different.
Sometimes we are surprised by what we discover there.
To uncover those things that lie deep in the crevices of our hearts, the cleaning tools we need are a serious time of reflection, daily prayer, an extensive examination of conscience, and the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
This cleaning out of our hearts is not just a once-a-year ritual, but an ongoing practice on our spiritual journeys. It can take hard work uncovering layers of clutter, and sometimes just chipping away at even the first layer can be painfully difficult.
But it is so worth it. And necessary.
A humble realization
Beyond the cobwebby build-up you find in your heart — the hidden sins, bad habits in thought or deed, dusty old vices — there is a dim ray of realization that you cannot humanly clear away these things by yourself.
You absolutely need God’s help.
And when you find yourself in the deepest chasm of your heart, futilely wiping away at all the muck around you, that dawning truth breeds, at last, the humility needed in order to willingly invite God into the mess and take over.
“Self-knowledge leads us by the hand, as it were, to humility,” said St. Josemaria Escriva (The Way, #609).
Finding God
Like a priceless treasure at the bottom of the dresser of your heart, underneath all the clutter of surface life and layers of dust and dirt revealed in a good confession, God lies hidden, waiting for you to discover Him for yourself.
But only with the humility that comes from offering Him your messy heart can you find Him.
Once you allow yourself to humbly “move out of the way” so God can clean out your heart, you begin to see that you really are nothing and can do nothing without God’s grace.
“If I humble myself and acknowledge my own nothingness, and cast away all manner of esteem of myself and (as I really am) account myself to be mere dust, Thy grace will be favorable to me and Thy light will draw nigh to my heart,” said Thomas à Kempis (My Imitation of Christ, p. 186).
After all that has hidden Him from you is stripped away, it is a true gift when you realize that your life is not actually your own, but God’s. With this humble acceptance, you can, at last, let Him get to work — on you and through you — as He sees fit.
That means regular cleaning of those dressers — and no more hidden rummage sales allowed.
Julianne Nornberg, mother of four children, is a member of St. John the Baptist Parish, Waunakee.