Trash Compactor of the Heart
Disclosure: This is just my story and how I have processed what I have learned. It is not meant to serve as a diagnosis tool in anyway or a commentary on anyone else’s journey. If you are experience depression, anxiety or suicidal thoughts, please contact a medical professional, certified counselor or call the Suicide Prevention Hotline: 1-800-273-8255.
After being diagnosed with depression and anxiety and finding a Christian counselor (Nate) and I was committed to the long haul of exposing the root of the problem instead of just addressing the surface issues. (To catch up on all that read here, here and here.)
Now what?
Unloading on someone that’s paid to listen to you is helpful. It relieves the pressure valve. However, me just talking wasn’t going to get me very far. I actually had to followNate’s guidance on the road to a healthier me. Now, Nate isn’t God and certainly wouldn’t claim to be, but he had wisdom and perspective on my life that I couldn’t see. My way of interacting with the world had gotten me into an emotional and spiritual tangle; I couldn’t depend on my wisdom to get me out of it. Having enlisted a guide, I needed to trust him.
The waters of the unknown felt uncomfortable, like being blindfolded and led through a river of lava with only a few wobbly stones sprinkled along the way.
“Journal about this…”
“Express your feelings about that…”
“Let it fail and see what happens…”
More frequently than not, I pushed back.
“You don’t fully understand my situation.”
“That would never work.”
“That’s not how my brain works.”
“I could never say/do that.”
Anger, disappointment, sadness, grief and even sometimes even joy take time and effort to process. As a busy mom and wife with a budding writing career, I didn’t have time to process a bunch of emotions that I chided myself for having anyway. In some ways I wanted to be a robot, rolling through life without letting people and circumstances effect me. I also possess an overwhelming desire to what is right, (poster child of the Enneagram 1ß). I learned to suppress any feelings that could lead to wrong actions on the outside. Some feelings were sinful, but some were not. I sculpted, suppressed and white washed my emotions for so long, I couldn’t tell the difference between sin and genuine emotions I needed to let myself experience.
My heart had become a trash compactor.
Nate encouraged me to “let the trash fly,” to let the feeling on the inside come out. I was appalled. How could a Christian counselor encourage me to sin? How could he want me to focus on my feelings when there were things I should be doingfor God?
He suggested that I had defined sin in a very narrow scopewhile even placing degrees on sin. Whether I wanted to admit it or not, I believed that outward sins were the only ones that really mattered. I would have never voiced that belief, but the way I had ordered my life clearly indicated what I believed. Sin is fairly easy to deal with when it fits neatly on a Top Ten Things Christians shouldn’t do list. Murder, stealing, abortion, adultery – those are all definable and fairly easy to avoid. Things like anger, unkindness, selfishness were pesky negative habits that simply had to be managed.
So in an effort to prove him wrong and tell him what a terrible idea he had suggested, one night I let the trash fly. My poor husband was on the receiving end. At first it was a trickle, and then an avalanche and by the end we were both sitting in a pile of trash. It took a nanosecond for me to see Nate’s point. He wanted me to get a good look in the mirror.
First, I saw what was in my heart. Just because I didn’t let it come out didn’t mean it wasn’t in there. All of my emotions and feeling weren’t wrong, but suppressing them soured them all into resentment, anger and bitterness. God wasn’t impressed with my ability to check the right boxes on the outside. In Scripture, He makes it pretty clear He looks at the heart. In that moment the lie that only the “big” sins on the outside mattered was exposed.
Second, I saw the pain I could inflict on someone I claimed to love. My sin and trash compacting caused him real pain that left a scar. My husband is incredibly forgiving and does a pretty good job of not letting me see the effects of my sin on him, but that night it was undeniable.
Finally, I began to see the damage the trash compactor was wreaking on my life and those around me. As a person created in God’s image, I was denying fundamental parts of my personhood. I wasn’t a robot void of feelings and emotions. I needed to face my sin, my wants, my hurts, my desires to see who I was. I had to stand in front of the mirror naked and admit what a mess I was.
I wish I could say that the trash compactor empties out on the first try or that there weren’t other little trash compactors hidden away for difference people and circumstances, but unfortunately that’s usually not the case, especially if things have been building for a while. It is a long road, one I’m still on, to learn to share, grieve, love and struggle in real time. As I learn to recognize sin on the outside and inside and as I admit my need for love and grace more each day, the trash compactor doesn’t fill up as quickly.
“Letting the trash fly” isn’t an excuse to walk around screaming angry rants at people all day or live in a cesspool of emotions, denying God’s power to work in our lives. It is a temporary exercise to give a real clear picture into our heart.
See, God won’t work on our facade. He needs the real us before real work can begin, and for a lot of us, it takes some digging to find ourselves. While it can be an incredibly painful process, there is a brilliant light of truth that breaks through the darkness – God’s grace.
I never appreciated grace until I saw my mess. If I could keep things buttoned up on the outside, I cheapened grace to a one-way ticket to heaven. I didn’t need others around me to extend grace if my view of sin was narrow enough to keep me in the clear.
The only way to move forward is a really good look in the mirror of His Word. We see ourselves for who we truly are. Authentic self-discovery isn’t about finding a better version of ourselves. It is about finding our true selves in light of God’s grace.