Dump Runs

I've hauled a lot of trash to the dump this week. I cleaned out two sheds and was amazed at the volume of junk I had hoarded over the years. One shed in particular was like an archaeological dig layered with 20 years of stratified detritus from our lives in this location. Some of it, I might have used, had I remembered it was buried under accumulations of other stuff.

I could hardly get into that shed and the pile had essentially rendered the shed useless, not to mention it's contents.

Now, after a thorough cleansing, the shed is able to serve me. I have easy access to all of it's contents. It's contents are only those things I need. The trash, overburden, worthless and rotten is all gone, buried in a growing mountain of stuff others have similarly discarded. In fact a scraper, loader/compacter and bulldozer are kept busy full time just managing that mountain of once priceless rubbish.

I guess at one time, I must have thought that trailer load of stuff was worth keeping. What has changed? Perhaps the realization that if I hadn't used it again in 20 odd years, what makes me think if might in the next 20. Perhaps I kept it because having exchanged it for money, which represented hours of labor, I somehow needed to justify it's expense in the first place. As the money was no longer hoarded in the Bank, I needed to hoard it's results somewhere else.

All I really know today, is that it was liberating to toss it all and be done with it. It was a burden I took on long ago. One I took on so gradually that I didn't notice the weight of it until it had practically buried me. It was so liberating in fact, that I'm looking elsewhere for more baggage to unload. I love the dump for it's open maw, so willing to receive my burdens allowing me to leave so empty and light, happy to return to tidy, useful, swept out sheds.

I was tempted to call this a metaphor for life, living, repentance, redemption, healing, salvation, all provided by the Atonement of Jesus Christ. It is not so much a metaphor as a real manifestation of life. For Atonement is both spiritual and temporal. Mortality is both spiritual and temporal. Eternity is both spiritual and temporal. Cleansing the sheds of valueless garbage is no different than cleansing our souls of the same. Both foul our lives. Cleansing is cleansing.