American Idolater

As I tackle a long overdue decluttering project this week, I'm faced with what seems to be overwhelming decisions about what to keep and find a new place for vs. what needs to go.  As this happens, I'm discovering that what should be a fairly simple process is far more emotional than I'd dreamed.  Rather than being just items, I'm realizing that many of them represent expectations that I've had for myself or are tokens of a stage of life that has past.  Despite the fact that most of those expectations have been unrealistic and that some of the stages of life captured in those items are ones I'd prefer not to go back and visit, there's a part of me that is fearful of letting them go.  I let them define me for so long that it's a bit scary to think of releasing my tight grasp.

We choose to place emotional value into inanimate objects. ~ Adam Baker

As I read this sentence today, I couldn't help but think of the verses in Isaiah that describe how useful materials were also shaped into idols:

He cut down cedars, or perhaps took a cypress or oak. He let it grow among the trees of the forest, or planted a pine, and the rain made it grow. It is used as fuel for burning; some of it he takes and warms himself, he kindles a fire and bakes bread. But he also fashions a god and worships it; he makes an idol and bows down to it. Half of the wood he burns in the fire; over it he prepares his meal, he roasts his meat and eats his fill. He also warms himself and says, “Ah! I am warm; I see the fire.” From the rest he makes a god, his idol; he bows down to it and worships. He prays to it and says, “Save me! You are my god!”   Isaiah 44: 14-17

While all of these items with sentimental attachment don't sit on an altar in my home and I don't literally bow down to them and ask them to save me, I find myself uncomfortably aware of how tightly my fingers dig into my palms at the thought of getting rid of some of them.  What would I do?  Who would I be without them?  Wouldn't I be filled with regrets?  What if I need them someday? What if I someday do become the type of person who would use that type of item on a regular basis?  If I give it all away, then I won't have it.

I am gradually realizing that by placing so much emotional importance to these inanimate items, I have made them into idols.

Some of these idols have been moved with me for the past 20+ years.  Every so often I've had a "pilgrimage" of sorts to the mental place of their making, reliving either the memories associated with them or the expectations attached to them.  And in clinging so tightly to them and the past, there's a danger in not living fully in the present or preparing myself for the (all so different from what the items collectively represent) future.  Even more serious, how much have these idols gotten in the way of what God has in store for my life?  Has each of those self-imposed expectations for who I should be and how I should live blinded me to God's expectations for me?  If I'm really honest, God probably has much different plans for me than the rigid standard of expectations that I've set up for myself and then cut myself down when I've failed miserably at meeting them. 

What if?  What if instead of hanging on to all these items that remind me of my own accomplishments, my own dreams, or my own failures, I instead hung on to the ones that remind me of God's work in my life?  What if I were to stop placing my hopes and dreams onto inanimate objects, and instead cast them onto God and trust that if they match His, He will provide all that is needed to fulfill them?  What if in the process of letting go of the things that I have let define me, I actually find myself?

It's time to find out what is on the other side of the what-ifs.  Anyone need a lot of used idols?