Taming of the Shrew

My pastor recently preached a sermon on Genesis 1 titled “God’s Calling”. In it, he mentioned that everyone’s calling is to subdue creation and have dominion, that is control it and turn it into something of benefit.. My limited brain immediately brought to mind the example of musicians taking jumbles of notes and making beautiful music and artists taking color and line and making picturesque, museum-quality artwork. Later, when my friend and I were out running, I jokingly said we were subduing the creation that was our bodies and making fit beings out of them. A few steps and labored breaths later, I realized my joke was true (some of my most profound statements often start off as joke). It made me start thinking of other ways I could subdue creation and make something beneficial.

One of the problems with being single is not having someone readily available to bounce off ideas. I have so many of them they overwhelm me. I drown in my imagination, my thoughts, my feelings, my opinions. They wind up jumbled into a giant knot that weighs me down, ties me up and restrains me where I’m unable to move. Kind of like a “hoarder” only it’s my spirit that’s trapped inside my mind. My brain is like a cluttered, bulging file cabinet that lacks order. Hundreds, maybe thousands of stray notes have been stuffed in there with no order, causing me distress and confusion.

Perhaps writing more would give me an outlet, a manner by which I could subdue the thousands of thoughts that crowd my mind and maybe uncover something beautiful. Subduing my thought-life may bring about something honorable to God. At the very least, my mind would be decluttered and cleaned up and maybe not weigh me down with the junk of sad and desperate thoughts. Maybe something lovely might be uncovered, like a buried treasure.

My Hope Chest

For the past 30 years I've sat through hundreds, maybe thousands of hours worth of sermons, Bible Studies, book discussions and conversations on marriage and parenthood.  Though I had no need for the information at the time, no practical application, I absorbed that information for the time when I would need it.  For the time when I would be married and have children.  I gently placed each and every tidbit in my heart like a girl filling her hope chest.

At times, I would open up the chest and look over all that I had, imagining the days when I would put all that great advice to use.  I would be well supplied when I started up my new life with my spouse.  I would hit the ground running when parenthood happened.

In 16 days I turn 50 years old and all the items in my hope chest have sat unused and they never will be.  They've gathered dust, rusted, rotted.  I wonder what I could have done with all that time I spent sitting through those sermons, etc.  I wonder how much money I could have saved had I not spent it on those books.  I feel as though all those people who told me that a time would come when I would be able to put that info to good use lied to me.  I was tricked, deluded, used.

If I had a real hope chest filled with towels, sheets, dishes and other household goods I could donate them to charity, toss them in the garbage...or burn them.  How do I get rid of all this unusable advice that is stored in my mind and heart?  There's no way to get rid of it all.  Every tiny morsel taunts me.  It all weighs me down; my heart is heavy and burdened.  How can I divest myself of all this clutter?