Confessions: A Different Kind of Hoarder

158730215Are you a hoarder? I bet you are. We all are, really, on some level, with some thing. I came to learn recently that I’m an information hoarder. And even before I knew that, I learned I was a faith hoarder—I only just now have descriptive words for it.

Information hoarder was described to me as someone who reads up on something they’re interested in, and then does nothing with the information. They collect it in their super huge brain and don’t do anything with it to benefit themselves or others. I tend to do that. I have so many interests that to follow each as a hobby would almost eliminate the time I need for eating. . . . Now, that’s an idea: busyness as a way to stop eating and lose weight—different blog post, I hear ya.

So, I know how to make a brooch bouquet. I know how to metal stamp. I know six weeks worth of metalworking classes. I know four “wine and paint date night” classes worth of slapping paint on a canvas to resemble Van Gogh’s Sunflowers—if you squint. I know how to drill a hole in seashells, or bead a necklace. I even know how to blow glass and sky dive, and take photographs and play tennis. When’s the last time I did any of those things as a hobby or for fun? During that class.

That’s a lot of information to hoard.

But I haven’t just hoarded information; I’ve also hoarded faith. For a long period of time, I read the Bible, sang the songs, recited verses, read the books and the concordances and the summaries. And I didn’t do anything with it. I wallowed in self-pity and disdain and self-doubt. I was negative and hopeless and distraught. Until.

Until a friend told me that I wasn’t standing on my faith. I think she actually said, “You know all of this truth, you know God is good, but you aren’t acting like it!” And she said it with an exclamation mark. At the time, my response was “I know!” But I hadn’t really known until she called me on the carpet and, in not so many words, said I was a faith hoarder—having faith but not exercising it. It hurt when she said it, but I didn’t tell her that. And it was probably the loudest spoken truth anyone had ever worked up the courage to say to my face.

And I’m grateful.

Once I learned to stand on my faith, implement my faith, actively believe, I began to truly feel like my heart belonged to Jesus—I had said that it did, but hadn’t acted like it until now.

I still hoard information. I just like to know, you know? But I don’t hoard faith anymore. It’s mine. I’m using it. I’m standing on it.

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