Cobwebs

Several years ago I had an interesting experience that taught me a powerful lesson. One of my least favorite, but needed, chores is to clean out the garage. I have seen lots of garages in my day where they become the extra storage room for a house. At first there are two cars in the garage. Over time extra boxes, new tools, yard equipment, and plain old stuff end up being stored in the garage until there is only room for one car. Then comes the final test. The extra stuff starts to spill over to where the last car was and then all of a sudden both cars are relegated to the driveway. 

I have been determined to keep both my cars in the garage, but I must confess that sometimes they have to squeeze into their garage spots as more and more stuff ends up in the garage. At the point where I would rather keep the garage closed than let my neighbors see the mess that’s getting out of control, something kind of snaps inside of me and I realize it’s time to clean up and organize my poor, sad looking garage. Those moments always come. Sometimes they are a few years in the making, but they always come.

When the day of reckoning comes, I plan on spending an entire day on the project. The first thing is that everything has to come out of the garage. My driveway looks like we’re having a garage sale. I’ve even had people stop in front of the house to ask me if we’re having a garage sale. I just smile and say, “Not today. I just finally got serious enough to clean up and reorganize the garage.” After deciding what stays and what won’t end up back in the garage, I start cleaning the garage. I sweep the floor and then wash it out with the hose. 

Now comes the part when I learned my lesson. One time after the garage was all cleaned up and it was time to put everything back in, but in a more organized fashion, I took one more look around. To my surprise, I found cobwebs in the corners and on the ceiling. I hadn’t really noticed those cobwebs because of all the other mess in the garage. So, I took some time and pulled down all the cobwebs. Then I put everything back in the garage. I love it when the last thing is put back in place and the garage feels organized and back in control. Maybe it’s a guy thing, but I really do love that moment. As a matter of fact, just writing about this motivated me to go back out to the garage to do a major cleaning. It looks so much better now.

As I have thought about not discovering the cobwebs until everything else was cleaned up, I thought about a lesson our Savior Jesus Christ taught. He said, “For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye. Or wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam of thine own eye and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote of thy brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:1-5).

The part from that scripture that comes to my mind is hypocrisy. As I look at the judgment, harsh words, criticism and meanness that is all over the Internet, Social Media, politics, the news, and sometimes even in our own homes, I realize that people are generally not realizing that they still have cobwebs to clean up in their own garages/lives. It’s important to own our problems and be more focused on fixing our own issues than spending our time belittling or attacking others, their opinions or their beliefs. I pledge to be better at cleaning out my own cobwebs and less anxious to attack or judge others. Part of that is that I especially pledge to not attack anonymously behind a fictitious name on the Internet. My invitation to us all is to follow the Savior’s words of caution as taught in Matthew chapter 7. Life is more beautiful when our “garages” are truly clean.