One mans trash...

This week was interesting.

I had a fantastic experience through my work. I am working this summer as an employee of a junk-removal company.  As you may have guessed, this job has provided all kinds of experiences for me. From disgusting to awesome, I have seen it all.

This week, I was cleaning out a rental property. The owner had decided to sell. As I entered this house, there was a very distinct smell, garbage everywhere, and it was more than apparent that the place had been doing no more than gathering dust for months. Amongst the trash, I found many clues as to the type of people who must have lived there. They were a worldly people, who often consumed their time with drinking and drug use. It was a house cleanup that caused heaviness of the soul. I was saddened someone would live that way.

I walked into a closet in one of the bedrooms, and there I saw a neatly hung-up military uniform, and a bible. It was a latter-day saint King James version of the bible, with an inscription on the inside cover. This bible was gifted in 1989 from this man’s parents. I looked up the name, and found it to be a war hero, a man who was a decorated veteran, and had passed away in 2010. I decided to do some research on this man; because I did not feel that a bible and uniform were very fitting of that house, which had shown it had been in possession of nothing more than people who did not live a life with any morals.

I found out about this man. He was a noble man with high morals. He lived to serve, enjoyed the outdoors, and full of integrity. He had been married a few weeks before his death to the woman that lived in the house. From conversations with several people who know the woman, she was a selfish person who used him for his military benefits. Shortly after he died, she had a boyfriend move into the house, igniting the moral decay of what once was the home of a hero.

I spent about an hour on the internet trying to find the family of this man. The next morning, I received a phone call. It was the brother of this man. His family had had some trouble finding out the details of their brother. They hadn’t heard from him for a space of years. His brother searched and searched for him, only to find out that he had passed away. I talked to this man for a good amount of time. He has nothing to remember his brother by, and I was more than grateful to mail them the items I found. They had often called their brothers wife, but she would ignore them, and not help them out at all. She wouldn’t so much as send them a picture. It was a good thing to right this wrong, and give them the bible and uniform that had belonged to their brother.

This experience taught me many things. As I sorted through the most important lessons, the one that came up over and over again was the idea of creating experiences that bring us closer to our spiritual side. I remember when I first saw the bible. My immediate reaction was to take it home myself. Although this was better than throwing it away, it wasn’t the right thing to do. My second impulse was to donate this bible. Perhaps, someone would have bought it, and it would’ve changed their life. A good outcome, but still not the right thing to do. It was my third option that I would find the family, and contact them. That was going to be difficult. This man had a very common American name, and that was the only lead I had. It seemed a large mountain to climb, but I felt that it was the right thing to do. I found the man, had a talk with him, and he was incredibly grateful. As we talked, I felt like I was edified spiritually. This man now had a connection to his brother who had since passed on. The family also took great comfort that this man, whom they thought had strayed from the faith, had this bible with him until the day he died.

Much like this experience, we have to make experiences for ourselves. We so often find ourselves praying to God that we can have a spiritual experience, or that we can do some good in the world, or help someone in need. Every day, like the bible, these experiences fall into our laps in a most unconventional way. The way we can let these experiences work for us and fuel us is by acting. Not only must we act, but we must act in the right way. We should stop, and try to view every option and all the outcomes. Sometimes, our first and second option won’t give us the spiritual manna we need.  Sometimes, our third and fourth option won’t. We need to think of what option will fuel us, and do it. Spiritual experiences don’t fall into our laps, but opportunities to make spiritual experiences do every single day. Seize them.