Idols on the shelf

My mom had a knack for choosing interesting punishments during my childhood.  In fact, I should probably attribute my Latin Honors in college and my organizational genius to the fact that all throughout my childhood, punishments always included a book report and a cleaning project.  My mom was a kindergarten teacher for years and therefore had access to an entire library full of books titled after fruits of the spirit or other character-building themes.  There was also a special book called "getting along with your sibling" that I probably wore out the binding to along the way...

When I was three years old, I refused to clean up my room.  I'm sure I was somewhat of a tiny terror, but stubbornness runs deep.  At this point in my childhood though, book reports weren't quite possible.  So what do you do with an unruly three year old who refuses to clean up her toys?  Well, take them all away and put them on the shelf in the closet, out of reach.  I remember sitting at the door of the closet crying my eyes out.  I earned each toy back by learning to keep it in its proper place in my room.  One toy each day until I had them all back.  A punishment that will always stay with me.

A friend lent me a book on Sunday Walking with God by John Eldredge.  It was exactly what I needed to read at the exact right time.  Here are some excerpts I was struck with last night while reading.

"We give our hearts over to so many things other than God.  We look to so many other things for life.  I know I do.  Especially the very gifts that he himself gives to us--they become more important to us than he is.  That's not the way it's supposed to be.  As long as our happiness is tied to the things we can lose, we are vulnerable.

And so God must, from time to time, and sometimes very insistently, disrupt our lives so that we release our grasping of life here and now.  Usually through pain.  God is asking us to let go of the things we love and have given our hearts to, so that we can give our hearts even more fully to him.  He thwarts us in our attempts to make life work so that our efforts fail, and we must face the fact that we don't really look to God for life.

Until God has become our all, and we are fully his, we will continue to make idols of the good things he gives us."

We fear vulnerability, yet our actions incite vulnerable and potentially painful situations from the get-go.  We don't want to be hurt or go through pain, but we've set ourselves up for it.

I've had many things taken away over the years, some more painful than others, but none of them easy.  I, like a little child, tend to grip certain areas of my life a little too tightly.  I let things, or relationships, or expectations become idols in my life and I refuse to loosen my grip on them.  So periodically, God has to step in and take it all away from me.  Pry it out of my fingers and put it out of reach, but not out of sight.  Never a fun lesson, but something I must learn from anyway.

And sometimes I think I just need those closet-door-crying incidents to shake me up a bit and make me realize that when God takes things away it's only because He knows what's best for me.  Albeit painful at the time, growth follows the pruning.