Heart Hoarder

Hi, my name is Katie and I am a heart hoarder.

What does that mean? Well, I’ve been keeping things in places that didn't belong in my heart and putting things above God.

As the fall 2016 semester comes to a close, I have been reflecting back on everything that has happened in the previous months. This semester has been one of the hardest semesters of my college career. Honestly, it started off good. I was able to manage everything in my life: work, school, church, family, friends, etc. Heck, I even threw in running a half-marathon. But after a while, I began to wear myself thin to the point where everything that I was doing felt superficial. I was a zombie. Going day to day checking things off of my lists, falling into my bed at the end of the day. Because of that, I naturally began neglecting things.

What came first to be neglected? First, it was my time with God, then church, then friends, then family. I neglected some of the MOST important things.I let myself get to the point of living life in such a mundane, meaningless way. I put my busyness and the image of having it all together above God.

One of my favorite passages in the bible that represents this is a story about Mary and Martha in Luke 10:38-42 (NIV version). Jesus and his disciples visit the house of Mary and Martha. When they come, Mary decides to simply sit and listen. Martha has the opposite reaction and gets caught up in all that had to be done for Jesus’s arrival.

The passage says,
“...Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, ‘Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!’ ‘Martha, Martha,’ the Lord answered, ‘you are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed-or indeed only one. Mary  has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’”


I just want to hug everyone in my life right now and say “SORRY” and to the people that have been supportive, loving, and gracious through this rough patch, y’all are the real M.V.PS. As much as I wish that I could be supergirl and manage 1,000,000 things; I am not and I cannot. And as much as I wish I could go back and do things differently, I cannot.

The thing about hoarding is that it not only keeps us from the best God has, but it allows the enemy and other things to speak negatively in our lives. Before we know it, the negative things seem to become truth and suddenly we feel far from God, even though he has been there the whole time waiting for us.

Maybe you are there right now, maybe you’ve been going through hoarding things in your heart that don’t belong. If you are, it is okay because God knows we are human and mess up. He knows that we will fail constantly. The important thing is that we learn from those mistakes and failures and that we continue to grow throughout it all. God does not want us to live life like a hoarder. He want us to truly live.