Unclutter Your Soul: A 7-Day DevotionalSýnishorn

Tell Yourself The Truth

Growing up, I associated own with business. It was what my father did and still does. He owns newspapers. “What does your dad do?” always felt like a complicated question to answer when I was young. From my observation, he read newspapers and talked on the phone all day.

To my surprise, my husband became a business owner. I say surprise because he started out as a pastor. I thought we were going in the exact opposite direction of what I had always known. When we began having children, however, he started a business to supplement our income. He’s the hardest worker I know, and I’m so proud of what he’s built. I can only imagine what he might dream up and build next.

Owning is not for the faint of heart.

Naturally, I grew up with a belief that we should work to own. In my forties, I’m learning an entirely different definition of owning, which came by not owning—of no longer owning a home.

When we moved, we went from my childhood home to a rental home—longstanding to interim. I’ve never been great with change or transitions, and this one felt very jarring. I was making someone else’s house my temporary home. We really didn’t know what was next except that, for a season, we would be renting. We were in a stay-put kind of transition.

The rental market in my hometown was a doozy. Every online search ended with me in tears. Furthermore, we didn’t have a date; we didn’t know when, exactly, we would be moving. Physically I was living in my home, but mentally I was already living in the unknown. I was learning, like I never had before, what it meant to “wait on the Lord.” I tried to remember that there was a promise attached: “But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint” (Isaiah 40:31 KJV). I needed strength.

I reminded myself over and over that God had never left me; He always made a way. I practiced recalling how He had been faithful to me. My mom would chime in and remind me when I’d forget. “God is faithful and this time will be no different,” she would say. As only God can do, the right home became available at exactly the right time. We could bring our pets, we had enough room for our big family, and the property owner was kind-hearted. The house was even surrounded by trees—God’s kindness was tangible.

I have missed owning a home, decorating without abandon, being rooted to a place. I missed it before I ever left the old house. However, years before a move ever transpired, at the start of my soul cluttering up, the Lord spoke to me:

Home is not a place; it is a person. And that person is Jesus.

“Yes, Lord, You are my home.” I whispered.

My mouth spoke in what I believed to be true sincerity. Thus, it was not easy to discover that this was not the reality of my heart.

As we were moving, packing up items that had been in that home for decades—items that felt like they belonged to the home more than they belonged to me or my family—God began to show me that this next season was to be about owning my inner home. I didn’t need to be focused on sourcing new furniture, plotting DIYs, building gallery walls, or obsessing over the next house I hoped to own. Instead, I was to work with what was sitting upon the shelves of my soul. 

A little over a year later, my dear friend Mindi invited me to Seaside, Florida, for a girls’ trip. I was the only introvert on the trip, so I gladly accepted the single room and was happy to wake up early to have thinking time on the covered porch of the darling Airbnb where we were staying. 

My eyes took in the pastel-colored coastal homes while my soul drank in the beauty of the surrounding nature. Before I knew it, I was traveling into my well-worn daydream of a place of my own, wishing that one of these lovely houses were mine. 

Why did I want to own a home so badly? Owning made me feel safe. Owning made me feel like somebody (I don’t mean this in a pretentious way, but a tangible one)—somebody who had a place where they belonged, a place they felt settled, a place where their roots could grow deep.

I returned to the place where I was, feeling the sticky breeze upon my skin, staring off into the pines that reminded me more of Georgia than Florida. I remembered that all I thought I owned was never mine to begin with; it’s all God’s, and it always has been (the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it—Psalm 24:1).

Own yourself, I heard Him whisper. Your actions. Your attitudes. Your behavior. Your choices. There is no decorating right now—other than your heart and soul.

Recently I went through the process of owning my depression. Naming depression was not easy for me. It was one of those, “If I don’t say it, it’s not real” things in my life. I own my depression by making a choice to lay this at the feet of Jesus.

You can do the same with whatever it is that is cluttering your life and preventing you from owning your choices. 

Ask Him today and He will show you the way!

Respond

What things in your life do you own? 

What do you need to give to the True Owner, our Lord Jesus Christ?

Prayer

Lord Jesus, everything in my life is Yours—my family, my home, my future, my eternity!