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Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26 NIV

It’s not the first time we’ve cleaned the attic. In fact, it’s been a process over that past six years since our kids married and flew the nest. We thought we had a good handle on our “accumulated garbage” until an insulation contractor crept up the attic stairs and started poking around. 

Armed and ready we climbed up the attic steps last weekend and began hurling unwanted, broken household items out the window and filling garbage bags to overflowing. It was easy, even liberating to rid ourselves of all that unnecessary stuff. Why would anyone keep old wire hangers or old curtain rods or broken lamps? What’s the use? Those things were easy to toss!

Some boxes, though, stopped us in our tracks; those that contained forgotten photographs of our parents when they were courting and newly married, of us as newborns, and our kids school days. Even more so, shoe boxes filled with our college love letters. We read ever letter, touched every photograph and relived all the good (and not so good) memories. We poured over them for hours because they are the important ones; the ones that show the foundation we built our life upon: love for God and love for one another. Without each of these components our marriage would have failed.

With our love for God as our foundation, nothing else would fail; for with God, nothing is impossible, not even marriage. Our love for one another, kept us going, built a family, made us strong. Whatever life threw at us (still throws at us) we could lean on one another and God our Father and face it all. When one fell, the other held us up and when we both buckled under pressure, God was right there in our midst, pulling us together. 

After reminiscing, we tucked away those sacred memories in our hearts and placed their reminders safely on the attic shelves and headed to the dump with round one of our accumulated garbage. My husband broke the silence on our short trip with this question, “What’d ya think?” Normally I’d say, ‘about what?’ but I knew what he meant. “Yeah, we’re still going strong after all these years,” I smirked. “God’s been so good. Here’s to thirty more years and then some!”

Sometimes it’s good to purge the attic–not only in our physical house, but the attic of our minds, too. It’s easy to accumulate garbage from every thing we experience–the good and the bad–and when we find ourselves off course from where we want to be or where we know God wants us to be–we need to climb those attic stairs and poke around the old boxes. Discard the brokenness and tuck away all God’s promises in our hearts. Hang onto the foundation God built for us — love of God and others — and get back on track. 

Happy Wednesday!