Making Room to Become Closet Space Ready!!

Yay!!! If you are reading this welcome to my new blog!! I don’t know about y’all but I’m so excited!! Not just for the new launch of my blog but also because it’s August!!! August is not only my birthday month, but it’s also the 8th month in the year and the number 8 means NEW BEGINNINGS (If you know me, let's just say I am CRAZY about this number)!!!

I’m also officially 29 years old so I’m excited to end my twenties with a bang !! With all this new excitement it made me think about that word “NEW”. I looked up this word and this is the definition that I found that really spoke to me :

"New means: renovated; repaired so as to recover the first state."

Immediately after reading that definition, it made me think about something I had to renovate not too long ago and that was MY CLOSET, so ya’ll bear with me as I tell ya’ll this story.

STORY DEETS :

Sooo…I opened my closet one day, and I see all my clothes on the floor along with my closet rod on top. This worked me up so much because now this meant I had to stop most of my day to hang back up these clothes and fix this rod. Next thing you know, here I am trying to hang my clothes back on the rod. As I was cleaning, I started to get a little irritated with the fact that I JUST cleaned out and reorganized my closet a couple weeks ago and here I am cleaning it out AGAIN !!!

Then, I put the rod back in place and thought “Ok let me get rid of a few more of my clothes and that might help”. Then I started putting clothes of no good on the side and hanging the ones I wear the most ….and BOOM …… my closet collapsed AGAIN!!! This time I had to sit back and rethink… “What I was doing wrong???” …because all I was going to do was make myself more frustrated with each collapse.

Then it hit me “AHA !!!” ….. maybe it’s just time for a new rod. See my closet had already came with this wooden rood in place so it had me thinking that maybe this rod had already run its course. I just needed a sturdier rod to handle the weight of all my clothes and accessories. Finally, I decided right then to go and buy a nice steel rod sturdy enough to handle the weight of my clothes and accessories .......BUT by the time I did all that I came back home to find out that my mom had fixed the original rod that I THOUGHT was no longer of good use. I was surprised and thankful because all it took was drilling in the rod to get it back sturdy again and in proper position.

This closet collapsing truly reminded me of how sometimes God will cause our lives to collapse. So why would such a loving God allow that to happen …. well in this blog I have 4 reasons on why this may be :

1. God wants you to RESTORE

2. God wants you to REEVALUATE

3. God wants you to REARRANGE

4. God wants you to RECEIVE

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God wants you to RESTORE:

As mentioned in the story earlier, I was frustrated with this old rod that I eventually went out to buy a new rod. Then to later come back and find the old rod was JUST FINE AFTER ALL. All it took was me repositioning the rod so the screws that came out could be drilled back in. This made me think about how sometimes we may feel unqualified to uphold all that God is calling us to uphold BUT GOD sees us as every bit of qualified to handle the load. If God didn’t see us as qualified, then HE would not call us to do the job at hand. 1 Peter 5:10 says:

“And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself RESTORE you and make you strong, firm, and steadfast.”

RESTORE means to return to something or someone into a former condition place our position. Like that rod in my closet, all we need sometimes is a fixer upper that RESTORES what was broken into good condition so we can handle the load more properly.

Every year I have a word posted on my vision board and last year that word was RESTORE because I was believing God to heal and fix my broken areas from bad experiences so I can get back to the person HE originally created me to be. That means I am every bit of capable to be rebuilt and that I choose to love every beautiful, broken, and ugly part of myself. Jesus does not give up on us, so I refuse to give up on me. Jesus is the one that can RESTORE us into the person He has called us to be.

Affirmations I had to speak over myself in this moment :

Do not let your circumstances, your situation, or current condition cancel yourself out because God never did.

Don't you know that God can use your experiences to not only rebuild and restore you, but to eventually rebuild and restore others too.

Everything that we need is already in us, it’s just a matter of how we choose to look at it.

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God wants you to REEVALUATE:

As I was reevaluating, how to fix this closet of mine, it took me back to some dark times when I felt like my life was falling apart just like this closet rod. Let's just say between late 2017 to early 2019, I was in a really dark season of my life where I had experienced anxiety attacks and mild depression. I was working as an elementary teacher, taking grad school classes, and doing internships that had me working 20 extra hours a week from my normal job. Yet insane enough, I was still trying to balance all that with other tasks and commitments. Just like that shaky closet rod, I was trying to hold on to too many things at once and felt that if I lighten my load ever so often, I would be just fine. This led me to thinking the way to get over this was by prioritizing my time and making more time so I can just REST in between my busy schedule and be with myself .... BUT BABBYYY ...... even with that the anxiety attacks and depression kept getting worse.

All these things I was trying to hold onto eventually caught up with me and began to make me feel even more crazy. However, it positioned me to let God all the way in my crazy mess that I created. I had to realize that at first, I was just looking and changing things on the surface level in hopes that my anxiety and depression will go away but kept ignoring the root issue. But once I got to the root of the matter, I realized that I needed to lean on God more versus depend on my own strength and the strength of others. Sure... When it came time to confront these things, it also took me a while to accept, believe, and change them but just like that rod I needed to make sure my foundation was STRONG AND SECURE. Don't get me wrong I was going to God but was I truly depending and trusting in HIM with all the concerns of my heart or was I trusting in myself to do the heavy lifting ?.......

I finally realized, I had to take a deeper look into what was causing me to feel the need to control all this versus letting him completely heal the mess in my life so I can experience a perfect peace that only comes from God.

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God wants you to REARRANGE:

After, my closet rod was nice and secure, and I reevaluated how my closet had fell apart. It led me to make the necessary adjustments to not only prevent my closet from falling apart but also become more aware of how I got here. This made me think about a couple things :

1. 1) We have to become more mindful of our present moments to lessen the chances of repeating our past mistakes.

1. 2) As humans, we naturally want to take the quickest route but sometimes the quickest route leads to an even quicker disaster.

See the problem with rushing is that it doesn't give us time to think or sit. At the beginning of my run end that I had with the closet, I was trying to quickly put things back in the closet and go about my day, but it KEPT COLLAPSING. As a result, I kept getting more and more frustrated, BUT……

the issue of the matter was me being more concerned on the answer to a problem versus making sure I fix the problem, so it won't happen again.

How many of us are doing that now?

2020 is halfway finished and so much has happened in such a short amount of time:

1. COVID-19

2. BAD ECONOMY/JOB LOSS

3. SOCIAL INJUSTICES

4. Let’s not forget about our own personal issues we are facing day to day.

It just feels like it’s too much and when will things feel and look a little bit more normal and lighter. It feels like it’s too heavy. So many of us had plans and visions of how this year was going to go and we keep trying to rebuild our plan in our own doing, but God wants us to build a plan in HIS doing. Just like that closet I was trying to figure it out on my own and take matters in my own hands .....BUT I eventually realized I had to get my foundation back together. It wasn’t until I got my rod back STRONG AND SECURE that I was able to have my clothes hang without falling. This reminds me of a story in the Bible from The Book of Daniel in Chapter 4. (Feel free to read on your own because I’m just paraphrasing a short part of the text in my own words.)

"In this story, King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that troubled him in his sleep. He then went to tell this dream to Daniel so he could interpret it. At first, the dream starts off with him seeing a very strong and tall tree that touches the skies with plenty of leaves, and different animals eating from the tree. Then later,the King states that a Holy One appears in the dream and leaves a message with a loud voice to cut down the tree down to its trunk and strip everything else off. He even tells him to be filled with dews of heaven and other spiritual things and if not, he will live as the animals and think like them. Finally, at the end of the dream the King admits that the “Most High is Sovereign. This dream was then interpreted by Daniel and he reveals to the King that God was trying to give him a warning about his kingdom but if he avoided the warning the Lord would strip away this powerful kingdom he admired and built because he did it without God."

(If you continue to read the chapter you will read to find that Daniel’s interpretation of the King’s dream comes true. Please read this awesome bible story on your own time.)

After reading this chapter, it made me think about a couple things :

1) How often we do this to ourselves like the King did in this story ? We try to grow and build things out of our own doing without God’s approval. Then after we get the results we want; we try to side-piece God in as if this was His doing. Meanwhile, God ain’t approve that!! God was trying to warn you, but you chose not to accept the warning due to your own stubbornness of not wanting to start over. Instead, we want to enjoy and watch the fruits of our labor we created without God’s approval.

2) We have to learn to allow God to be that foundation, that rod, that tree trunk for us and not our selves. We can only grow so far without God. We can only produce a certain amount of fruit without God. We can only reach so many people without God. This is why it’s so important to bring our plans to God.

3) We have to learn to plan WITH God.We have to learn to trust the promptings of the Holy Spirit and trust what God is leading us to do in times of uncertainty. We have to learn to trust what God is doing even during those times where we have fallen apart, no matter how many times. God stripped everything away from the King and it caused him to go into a wilderness season of isolation. But it turns out that this season of isolation and wilderness worked out for the King's good because it allowed him to experience God in a new way and give Him all the glory so he can receive God’s plan for his life. Just like the King, sometimes God has to tear us down to build us back up. But we have to be willing to surrender our lives so we can receive God’s rearrangement.

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God wants you to RECEIVE:

Finally, this brings me to my last point, God wants us to get in a humbled position that gives us room to build with God so we can receive the many blessings on the way, 1 Corinthians 3:11-14 says:

“For no one can lay any foundation other than the one already laid, which is Jesus Christ. If anyone builds on this foundation using gold, silver, costly stones, wood, hay or straw, their work will be shown for what it is, because the Day will bring it to light. It will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test the quality of each person’s work. If what has been built survives, the builder will receive a reward.”

Reading this scripture brought me so much joy!! This is why it’s so important to understand that we have to get our foundation right and in order. We have to allow God to restore us from our brokenness and mistakes. We have to sit and spend time with God as we reevaluate that area of our life that is causing us trouble. We have to allow God to rearrange our lives and embrace the change that comes with that. For then if our foundation is built the right way with God, it gives God room to MOVE.

Are you giving GOD room to move and show out in your life ? What areas are you not letting God in ? God doesn’t just want some areas of our lives. He wants to be a part of every area in our lives so He can bless it and build on it !! My closet was a hot cluttered mess at first and didn’t have any space to receive anything but after taking some time to rebuild and rearrange it, eventually it all came together and I finally had space to get some new things !!!

Just like my closet, God wants to give us some new things !!! Some new blessings, some new praise reports, some new beginnings, some new testimonies but we have to make sure our hearts are in position to RECEIVE it. God has so much he wants to show us and give us but we have to build with a SECURE AND STRONG foundation that can only come from HIM.

I don’t know about you’ll, but I want to be blessed and be a blessing!! I want to lead the way, so others won’t have to end up broken or fall apart like me!! I want to make HIS name great!! Not just for myself but for others to see that the many blessings I am receiving are not my doing but my Lord’s doing. So, if there is an area of your life that looks a complete mess now in this season … choose to open up that area of your life to God and receive what the Lord is trying to do in your life during this season. Trust that He can handle your broken pieces and that He can rebuild those broken pieces into something new. Amen.

May we rest and end on that thought that this is all for HIS glory.

God wants to give us so much, but we can’t receive what He has for us if were not willing to let Him in our lives so He can restore, reevaluate, and rearrange our broken pieces.

Soo after reading all this …

• What do you think God is calling you to do before you can receive/see some new things?

• What area of your life you have yet given to God?

• What is holding you back to let go and let God have his way with that area in your life that's falling apart ?

Thanks for reading,

Crissy Roe

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