by Rhonda Rhea @RhondaRhea

I had a little wrestling match with my vacuum cleaner recently. It was doing that wimpy-clean thing—you know, where you have to get down on your hands and knees and hand-feed it every little fuzz ball? If I’m going to do that, I might as well not have a vacuum cleaner. I could just pick up every little piece of fuzz and throw it in the trash myself—cut out the middle man.

A vacuum that’s lost all its “suck-ocity” is not worth much. So I got down in the floor, got the thing in a headlock and looked inside to find the problem. Oh, I found a problem alright. Several. 

The first was a little piece of sock. Then there was that string. And while I call it a string, I think it might better be described as a length of yarn that could’ve been an entire sweater in another life. There was a hunk of the bathroom rug the size of a Chihuahua—and I hadn’t even missed it. I was also surprised to find what I thought was a loofa. But then I realized it was just a whole bunch of those little plastic fishing-line-like connectors that attach price tags to things. Who knew they could find each other inside the dark recesses of the vacuum cleaner and form their own little solar system? No wonder the machine didn’t want to work! How did all that stuff even get in there? 

At least it gave me a little reminder. When we let our minds suck up the wrong things, we can’t expect them to work the way they’re supposed to. There’s a lot less wrestling with our minds when we’re emptying out the clogs and filling our minds with the kind of thoughts that truly feed our spirits and grow our faith.

Negative, evil thoughts will find each other in the dark recesses of our minds. And they multiply. The next thing you know, you find yourself with a solar-system-sized problem in your thought-life.

There’s so much garbage available to us. On the Internet, TV, movies, magazines—it’s accessible at every turn of the head.  If we let our minds suck up trashy junk, we shouldn’t be surprised when we have a hard time staying alert to walking out our faith-life well. 

Paul tells us in Philippians 4:8-9 what we’re supposed to continually feed our minds:  “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you,” (NIV). 

There’s a lot less wrestling with our minds when we remember to fill them with the right things. Less wrestling, more peace. As a matter of fact, that passage doesn’t merely say that we’ll experience great peace, it tells us that the God of peace Himself will be “with” us. It’s vital to our faith-life that we remember that His presence makes all the difference.

And personally, I’m also going to try to remember to clean out my vacuum a little more often. Especially since this last time I was unclogging it, even though we’ve never had one, I’m pretty sure I also found a gerbil.

Rhonda Rhea is an award-winning humor columnist for great magazines such as HomeLife, Leading Hearts, The Pathway, and many more. She is the author of 19 books, including the popular romantic comedies co-authored with her daughter Kaley Rhea, Off-Script & Over-Caffeinated and Turtles in the Road. Rhonda and Kaley have also teamed up with Bridges TV host Monica Schmelter for the Messy to Meaningful books and TV projects. Along with Beth Duewel, Rhonda writes the Fix Her Upper series, and she also co-authored Unruffled: Thriving in Chaos with Edie Melson. She speaks at conferences and events from coast to coast, serves on many boards and committees, and stays busy as a publishing consultant. Rhonda says you can find her living near St. Louis drinking too much coffee and snort-laughing with her pastor/husband, five grown children, and a growing collection of the most exceptional grandbabies.