Anna M. Aquino

Yesterday Dan and I decided we needed to vacuum under our couch. So in a wave of ambition he started taking apart the sectional, and trying to move it so I could reach in those places that haven’t been reached in too long. It doesn’t matter who you are, we have all had an assorted collection of stuff that collects under our couch that you can’t help but look at it and wonder, “How did that get there?”, or “ Huh? I didn’t know that was there?”, and the “Eww really, KIDS!” I would have never guessed all that junk was under the couch. It certainly didn’t look like it from the outside, but never the less all of that was hidden from my view. As people we live our lives like this. We think that all is well. We spend a lot of time making sure we look good, and truthfully there can be a lot of things going on in the inside. Underneath those smiles, teeth whiteners, and lipstick can be something that isn’t as pretty. We have to learn to have an attitude that we are open for correction. ...

Yesterday it became apparent that it was past time for us to go through my youngest daughter’s toy bins. Like many children you can easily find an enormous collection of junk. It isn’t usable toys. It’s pieces of broken toys, random art projects, lost crayons, and Barbie Doll shoes. From two toy bins we took out three garbage bags of trash. On a very positive note we were able to combine the two bins into one and did go through a collection of junk where my youngest found long lost items she’d forgotten about and we put a few good items on craigslist. As I plowed through piles of junk I began to think about how these toy bins are so much like our own lives. We can get caught up on doing things in life and forget about all the broken places. We can just start avoiding those random things and push them aside. We can forget to continue to “clean” out our emotional and spiritual closets until there is so much junk that we have no choice because the junk is running over. I remember sin...