Hoarders

I don’t watch a lot of TV. If I do, it’s usually when I’m at my parents’ house, and that hasn’t been consistent in the last four years of college and one year of living overseas. But I’m home again for a three-month stretch, and there’s one show that has captured my attention. It’s a sick fascination, actually. The show is called Hoarders. Each episode shares the stories of two people who have filled their houses with stuff, usually from floor to ceiling. After watching one episode, I was so disturbed that I went and cleaned out my closet.

One show featured a woman who had over 50 dogs and cats in her house. She didn’t just love animals; you could tell she was desperately lonely.  One man hadn’t been able to access certain rooms for years because they were so full. He bought a little mini-fridge to keep in his bedroom because he couldn’t get to the main refrigerator.

It seems insane, and these people often need professional help, but I realize that these hoarding tendencies usually start after people experience a significant loss. There is real pain; they cling to the past, look for security and fulfillment in objects that others would deem as worthless, unusable trash. They dumpster dive and Goodwill shop, looking for steals and deals. And their houses fill.

Hoarders interests me because it’s not a show that parodies these people’s problems. They bring in expert organizers, but they also bring psychologists to help tackle the mountains of emotional issues often linked to the mountains of possessions. They want to bring real change. The problem is, most of the time all they can offer is therapy and a team with three Got Junk? trucks.

I can’t help but liken this show to my own life, my own heart. You may have heard the analogy of our hearts being like houses, and over the courses of our lives, we accumulate things and pack them away, filling up our heart’s rooms. These could be hurts, memories—haunted or treasured—along with idols we use to fill up the emptiness. Our reconciliation to God is likened to us moving out of our “house” and Jesus moving in. We give him the keys to the house and make him Lord of our lives. Still, though he might now have keys to the front door, sometimes there are rooms locked away, areas where we just don’t want him to go. We have places in our hearts like the West Wing in Beauty and the Beast.  Off limits. Too painful, too private, too compromising, too shameful. And maybe blocking the way is a whole hallway full of junk.

I watch Hoarders, incredulous at how some people exist in such squalor, but I ignore my own “house”, filled to capacity with trash. Except it’s not milk cartons, cassette tapes, clothes, knick-knacks, and animal feces. It’s fear, pain, lies, false gods, and pride. And I’m hoarding them.

The good news is, Jesus doesn’t show up with a dump truck or filter through piles of my trash, asking what to keep and what to chuck out.  He knows I need healing, a deep purge of everything in me that’s not of Him. And when I truly surrender my life, I’m giving him the key to every room in my house, however painful it is, because I can finally see that he himself is all I’ve ever wanted. Those things I looked to for satisfaction and fulfillment and purpose—they don’t even come close to what He offers.

Psalm 139:23-24 says, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”  I’ve read these verses many times, but Hoarders gave me a new perspective on it. I can see that therapist inch his way around mounds of boxes, or the team with protective masks as they rid a kitchen of rotten food. God searches out every hallway, every corner, and he removes the ruined clothes, the broken things, the offensive smells. He leads us in a better way.

Suddenly there’s no more room for fear, or lies, or pride; they’re replaced with the light of his presence, the depth of his detailed, specific love, the beauty of who he is.

He fills every room.