Cleaning up the Junk

On my journey to Jesus one of my most laborious tasks is cleaning up the "junk" in my life. I have junk everywhere!! It clutters my thoughts, crowds my heart, not to mention the junk that actually fills my closets and basements. We all have junk we have been holding on to for far too long. I have been working for months on decluttering both internally and externally. The first few things I did was walk away from some unhealthy relationships that I had been holding on to for all the wrong reasons, and while my thoughts and my heart was becoming lighter I would tackle a closet and get rid of material things that were not essential to my families daily lives. Then I started working on my bad habits: the drinking, foul language, negative thoughts, gossip, passing judgement, just a few of the many I am sure. I replaced these with scripture. Every time I have a bad thought or was tackling a major obstacle I found scripture that inspired and guided me to bettering myself for Jesus. Day my  day my thoughts were brighter, joyful and I was brimming of hope and new life. Then I would tackle another closet and clean out more material junk. Each piece of emotional "junk" I threw away, and with each piece of material junk that I gave away opened me up and gave more room in my life for Jesus. I have much more junk to get rid of, and while it is a slow process of healing, I know that the benefits I will reap having Jesus strong in my heart and soul will be more beneficial to me than any "junk" could have been.