Chuck the Junk - Life Lessons from a Minivan

We cleaned out the family car this week. I mean, hauled the vacuum out there, took out the car seats, and swept out the goldfish kind of cleaned. I do not even want to think about how much yuckiness came out of my van. Because we have to drive so far to church, we end up eating at least two meals and two snacks a week in the car. No, it's not ideal, but it's just the way life is right now.

We found chicken nuggets, old biscuits, crushed Goldfish, and fossilized french fries is just about every crevice in the back of the van. The front wasn't much better. Bags from our fast food ventures, old bulletins and church papers, crushed Mountain Dew cans, and a couple of jackets were tucked around the front seats.

It's amazing there was room for us, to be honest.

So we cleaned it out. We even used glass cleaner on the inside of the windshield. The van hasn't been this clean in a long time.

What's the point of this, you ask? Well, I've been driving a clean van around all week and I LOVE IT! I am driving to the exact same places I drive every week, but it just feels better. It's easier to get the kids in and out of the car. Loading groceries or even the diaper bag isn't an exercise in futility. Somehow my little van even seems bigger on the inside than it used to. All because I shoveled the junk out of it.

What would happen if I shoveled the junk out of my life. Would my life feel bigger? Would it be easier to do the things I need to do? I know it would make it so God could put things in that needed to be there. We went to Costco this week and it was so easy to load those big boxes in the car because we didn't have to move fifteen things left in the car from last Sunday. When we got home we unloaded the car! What a novel concept!

I know my life, like my van, will get messy again. Sin will seep it's way into the cracks and crevices like a forgotten french fry. I just need to remember that if I'll let God bring a vacuum in more often, it won't seem like quite a chore to clean my life out.

On a lighter note, when we were cleaning out the car seats we found one of those shaker tambourines on a stick instruments that one of the girls had apparently brought home from church. The funny thing was that the stick was in one girl's seat and the head with the cymbals on it was in the other. It doesn't look like it's broken - it goes back together just fine - but I have to wonder how they decided who got which piece. We also found a piece of chewed gum that had miraculously not stuck to anything, but just sat there and dried out. Gross.

What's the strangest thing you've ever found while cleaning out your car?