Anger at the Pack Rats

My grandma was the biggest pat rat anyone has ever seen. I watched the show Hoarders for a while. It did make me think of her a lot. None of her houses had trash or rats in them. The random things in the houses were all at least somewhat valuable. She not only had one house full of random stuff. She had 4 houses full of stuff. Why? Well originally she would have big garage sales every weekend. She had a van, and she would drive down back alleys picking up things people meant to throw away. Most of those things just needed to be fixed, and then they could be sold. My grandpa had the amazing gift to fix pretty much anything. 

So that was a major business for her for a long time. She made herself a millionaire doing it, for the most part. She also was just very frugal with her money. Somehow, she only worked professionally 12 years of her life as a sub teacher, and at the end of her life she owned 7 houses. And those were California houses. Also, my grandpa was a High School math teacher for about 20 years. Then he ran his own handy man business for a long time. 

I helped my grandma clean out one her houses one summer. She paid me in couches. I got to keep the couches from that house.

I always felt some anger about her houses being so full of stuff. It seemed like she loved her things more then she loved people. I always wanted her to go to counseling about it, but she never did. It disgusted me honestly, because I like things to be very clean and spacious. It prevented me from wanting to go visit her. Currently my boyfriend visits his grandma every day. I would have done that with my grandma if her house looked more organized. 

I ended up being the opposite. I am very clean, like OCD clean. I don't like having too much stuff. I learned to be very clean from my step-mom. My mom turned out a bit like my grandma. She has kept the same boxes and things in her garage for about 30 years. She seems to have inherited the same disease of not being able to throw things away. 

I am more of a tosser. If I see no need for something, I throw it away. Maybe I have always feared becoming like my mom or my grandma, so I try hard to not become like them, by throwing things away often. 

It is good to value things, but not to love things more than people. Things don't matter that much. Satan might try to tell you to worship all the random stuff that you have. Don't do it. Stuff is just stuff. Get rid of all your extra things that you don't use. You will feel happier if you do that. May God help you to figure out what is worth keeping and what needs to go. You can do it. :)

James 4:1-4

"What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you steal. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. Don’t you know that friendship with the world means enmity against God? Therefore, anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God."

Don't love the world. Don't love stuff. Love God and love people. Stuff doesn't matter as much as loving people.