From Glitter to Litter

In 1983, a Connecticut engineer named Frank Hursey performed an experiment on a mouse that would change medicine forever. He cut the mouse open and applied a mineral called zeolite onto the wound. The wound stopped bleeding within seconds and Hursey released the mouse. Zeolite takes water out of wounds and forces platelets and clotting factors together. Frank Hursey created what it now known as QuikClot, a topical hemostat agent.

The U.S. Army was a popular customer and for good reason. According to Charles Barber, author of In The Blood, QuikClot had a huge impact on one soldier in particular. Barber writes,

“In November 2005, Lieutenant Ryan Kules, of the Army’s First Armed Division celebrated Thanksgiving dinner with the 24 soldiers under his command, at his base near Taji, Iraq. That dinner was the last thing he would remember for weeks. Early in the morning of Nov. 29, 2005, his patrol was on the way back to from an early morning mission. The Humvee ran over artillery shells buried in the road. Two soldiers in the vehicle with Kules were immediately killed. Kules was thrown a hundred feet, landing in an irrigation creek.

Medics found his right arm and left leg, which had been blown off his body, before they found Kules. One medic applied the same product — QuikClot — to what was left of his leg and arm, which stopped the bleeding long enough to stabilize Kules. On the helicopter ride to the combat hospital in Baghdad, Ryan had lost his pulse more than once. He underwent three dozen surgeries and remained an inpatient at Walter Reed Hospital for four months. Eighteen years later, he is the father of three teenage children and a senior officer at the Wounded Warrior Project. ”

I write all this to share that clots are necessary, and often a good thing, in medicine. But there’s a flip side. In humans, if a clot forms in the heart and goes elsewhere in the body, it is dangerous. Strokes, aneurysms, pulmonary embolisms can result, to name a few.

What about in daily life though? Medically, a clot is a big lump of sticky platelets. In our homes, we have another name for this – ‘clutter.’ Don’t believe me? Look it up, dear one. The root word for clutter? You guessed it – Old English clott “a round mass, lump.” From the 1550s, “to collect in heaps, crowd together in disorder,” variant of clotern “to form clots, to heap on.”

I have an adorable ten year old daughter whom we lovingly call Trash Panda as she has the raging desire to turn everything that is the least bit glittery into a craft project, or worse, a ‘collection.’ Until two weeks ago, her bedroom looked like Etsy ( a craft website) walked in and threw up all over the floor. Trash Panda was recently at summer camp and I took great delight in making sure her room was completely made over while she was away. Trash Panda now has a designated craft station in the dining room.

It’s easy for kids to get carried away with their ‘collections.’ However, I had my own ‘clots’ I decided to clear while she and her brother were at camp. The junk drawer got organized and I over confidently thought I could tackle the entire house. Un-clot the whole house. In two weeks. As it turned out, I had my own glitter litter that I struggled to part with. For me, my Achilles heel of clutter turned out to be my twenty years of homeschool materials that I had meticulously cataloged. At first, I was able to fill two large baskets of old papers and workbooks to be recycled. Yet, some of the other items proved emotionally trickier. I didn’t want to part with them. I stalled in my efforts to clear away the clot. I kept asking myself why. I researched clutter and I learned something. I was grieving, on a micro level. I was trying to hold onto years that had passed. Children that had grown. I had to surrender what was, for what is.

What on earth does all this have to do with my relationship with Jesus? For me, I realized that I cannot serve Him today while looking longingly in the rearview mirror. My clutter, my clots, my ‘glitter litter’ if you will, becomes a sticky lump that drowns out the voice of Jesus. If our possessions own us instead of the other way around, how can we be ready to serve the one who gave up His very life for us?

Then Jesus said to them, “Be careful and guard against all kinds of greed. Life is not measured by how much one owns.” Luke 12:15.

I wish you strength, dear reader, to release your clutter, your clots, your glitter litter, whatever they may look like.

All love ~ Elle