One Wee Spark

I just returned from a trip to San Francisco, CA. My purpose for travelling to SanFran was to be a participant in the Mental Health Association of San Francisco 's Annual Conference on Hoarding and Cluttering. MHA-SF has been doing this for the last 12 years and has a community-based task force second to none. They are the leaders in reaching out, advocating, and treating those who struggle with stuff. Initially, I decided to go for my own purposes. As a family member of someone who is clutter-affected, I wanted to go hoping to learn something. As a former participant of the show "Hoarders", I wanted to network with others treating and working with family members. As a human being still in process who decided this was the year to stop being defined by my own fears, I wanted to step out and not wait to be invited. So I registered for the conference, made flight, hotel, and car arrangements, and contacted CJ Omololu (author of "Dirty Little Secrets" who lives in

(I John 4:17-21) I am preparing for a trip this week, a trip that I believe God is placing before me to expand the possibilities of ministry calling I felt for the first time in October 2009, standing in the front yard of my mother's horribly destroyed and trash-filled home. My mother is a compulsive hoarder. My earliest memories of her bedroom at my grandparents' home (which would have been age four at the oldest) was of piles of clothes atop a dresser, teetering carelessly near the edge of safety from the floor. My memories of my childhood home are similar--pathways between clutter, trash, junk mail, appliances that stood taking up space but not functioning. I grew up in chaos and squalor. But I am not a hoarder. And my mother has made miraculous steps toward managing her condition. Hours and hours have been spent in prayer for her healing, and although I did not seek it, for restoration and healing in our relationship as mother and daughter. I did not seek it because I was n