Lenten Reflection - 40 Bags in 40 Days

I was raised a Southern Baptist and changed denominations to Presbyterian as an adult.  As a result, the tradition of Lent is something that I have slowly come to embrace.  I think it has been a slow process as well because I am disturbed by the idea of "giving something up" for just 40 days.  Shouldn't it be about more transformative change?  If the purpose of the season is to come closer to God and grow spiritually, then the concept of denying something to yourself for only 40 days makes me think you don't want continuing closeness.  I prefer the idea of changing habits to proactively do something that you don't normally do, but should.  I always have difficulty deciding what that "something" should be.

However, I read a woman's blog post earlier this week about decluttering your life in order to clear yourself to focus on what is truly important.  That resonated within me, both because it is more proactive and also because I have lots of clutter in my life!  You can read her blog post here.

So, here is my accountability record.  I am going to work toward making this happen!

Because the first day of Lent resulted in only about an hour of my day spent at home if I wasn't sleeping, I focused on something that could be decluttered from anywhere...

Yep, the inbox.  My Gmail account had about 5000 emails in it.  Have you experienced that kind of clutter?  You don't immediately clean up and so all the social media notifications, emails trying to sell you something, etc. just keep piling in.  And of course they are intermingled with the important things, so you are afraid to just go through and start deleting.

I started by creating a few folders for the things I would want to keep - then I searched for the oldest emails to see what I had held onto.  They were from 2010!  All of them lacked importance anymore - although I do see why I didn't immediately delete them back in 2010.  I went through the past several months, moving important mail into folders first.  Then, I just clicked a button to highlight all of the mail and hit the trash can icon!  

Checking email this morning was so much more relaxing....and it all got deleted after reading!  Some of it got deleted without reading.  I already feel like I have accomplished something toward freeing my life of the distractions that keep me from focusing more fully on God and my family.

Now, to figure out what I will clear out today.