Latest / The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming / What's in Your Junk Drawer?

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What's in Your Junk Drawer? · The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming

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Welcome to The Voice. We're breaking, believing, and becoming finally have somewhere to be heard.
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I'm Kim Munoz, and I'm so glad you're here.
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Today, I want to talk about something every home has. Every home.
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I do not care how clean your countertops are. I don't care how beautifully coordinated
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your storage containers are.
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I don't care whether you own a label maker and have organized your pantry into
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categories like snacks, baking essentials, and grains.
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Somewhere in that house, you have a junk drawer.
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And should you tell me that you do not have one, I'll assume one of three things.
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You're not being honest, you have an entire junk closet and have simply chosen
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a different name for it, or you're some kind of unhinged maniac.
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Because everybody has a place where the things that do not belong anywhere eventually land.
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Usually it's somewhere in the kitchen. At least that's where mine have always
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seemed to find themselves. And it's kind of funny.
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Every time you move into a new home, you kind of look around and almost immediately
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designate which drawer is going to become that drawer.
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You may not say it out loud, but you know this one. This is where all the random things are going.
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And before long, You open it, looking for one thing, and immediately encounter
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17 things you forgot you owned.
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There's usually batteries. Do they work? Nobody knows.
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But we're not throwing them away because one of them may still have a little life left in it.
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There are six pens, none of them write, a tape measure, two birthday candles,
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a key that hasn't opened anything since the first Bush administration,
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rubber bands that have somehow tied themselves together,
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a charger for a phone that you don't even own anymore, gift cards,
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you have no idea whether there's any money on them or not, 27 sauce packets,
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one random screw, you're absolutely convinced, belongs to something important.
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And let's be clear, you do not know what it belongs to. You don't even remember where it came from.
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But throwing it away feels dangerously irresponsible because the moment you
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put that screw in the garbage, the ceiling fan might fall. so we keep it.
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That is the junk drawer, a slightly chaotic collection of things that are not
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important enough to display, but apparently far too important to release.
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And I recently learned that people have written entire articles about junk drawers,
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which made me feel strangely validated.
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I mean, apparently, we're not simply disorganized, We're participating in a
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universal human experience.
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One article talked about the joy of the junk drawer, the idea that perhaps it
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is not evidence that we have failed to organize our homes.
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Maybe it exists because real life cannot always be sorted into perfectly labeled containers. Gasp.
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Some things are useful without being beautiful.
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Some things matter without having an obvious place. And sometimes we simply aren't ready to decide.
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The junk drawer lets us say, I do not know where this belongs right now,
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but I'm not ready to throw it away.
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And honestly, that is not very different from life.
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We all have experiences we do not know how to categorize while we are living through them.
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Was that relationship a mistake? Was that ending a failure? Or was it a redirection?
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Was I rejected? Or was I protected?
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Do I keep this memory because it still matters, or because I've never stopped long enough to decide?
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Life does not arrive neatly labeled. We don't always understand where something
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belongs while we're in the middle of it.
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So we put it somewhere inside of ourselves and we think, I'll deal with that later.
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And sometimes we genuinely mean it, but later becomes next week,
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and then next year, then 10 years, until one day, we open the drawer and realize
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we've been carrying far more than we knew.
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I know what it feels like to empty more than a drawer. After my divorce,
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I had to pack up my family home.
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And that was not simply moving out of a house.
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That was going through more than 25 years of a life.
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Well, more than 25 years because I had managed to avoid doing this after my
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first divorce and had apparently been hauling some of that stuff around with me ever since.
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So really, I was sorting through a marriage or marriages, motherhood,
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birthdays, holidays, business decisions, ordinary Tuesdays,
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years of raising children and building a home that, at one time,
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I believed would hold the rest of my story.
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And as I packed, I realized I did not have just one junk drawer. I had several.
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There was the kitchen junk drawer. that one held mostly everyday things,
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batteries, scissors, random cords, little items connected to the boys,
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the kinds of objects that seem meaningless until you remember the hands that once held them.
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Then there was the junk drawer in my office, receipts, paper clips,
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binder clips, random office supplies, and of course an entire army of pens we don't even use anymore.
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I don't know why we continue to collect pens. At this point,
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they're less like writing utensils and more like tiny plastic roommates.
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But the drawer in my bedroom was different. That one held personal things,
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greeting cards, notes, pieces of my marriage that had been tucked away and largely forgotten.
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And as I began going through them, I found card after card from my former husband.
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Many of them were filled with apologies. Apologies for the challenges in our
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marriage, apologies for the way things had been difficult.
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Even cards meant to celebrate milestones carried this undercurrent of self-reproach.
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There was a sadness woven through them, the kind of language that,
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looking back, seemed to come from someone who knew he was hurting me.
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Even when I did not yet understand the full extent of it.
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Then I found one of the first notes he had ever left me. It was romantic,
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the kind of note that at the time felt like something lifted directly from a movie.
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A put-this-on-light-the-candles-and-wait-for-me kind of note.
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And that mattered to me then. I loved romance. I loved sweeping gestures.
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I loved the idea of being chosen in a way that felt undeniable.
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So in the beginning, that note felt like evidence, that I had found the kind of love I had imagined.
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But holding it all those years later, I read it differently.
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What once felt deeply romantic now felt revealing.
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I could see how much of it had been performative, not necessarily because every
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word was false, but because the gesture seemed designed to draw me into a version
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of love I desperately wanted to believe in.
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It fulfilled the dream, and it created the feeling.
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But feelings and truth are not always the same thing.
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And that's the strange thing about going through an old drawer after your life has changed.
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The object hasn't. The words on the page were exactly the same.
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But you have changed. You can finally see what you could not see while you were inside the story.
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For years, I had read that note through the eyes of a woman who wanted the rom-com ending.
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That day, I read it through the eyes of a woman who had lived the entire marriage,
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and those two women understood the same note very differently.
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Packing that house meant sorting through far more than belongings.
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I was sorting through evidence, memories, promises, apologies,
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the version of my marriage I had believed in, and the version I could finally see clearly.
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There were things I held and thought, this mattered. There were things I looked
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at and thought, this was not what I believed it was.
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And there were things I released because they no longer belonged in the life I was building.
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It was painful, but it was also freeing. Not because the years meant nothing. They meant everything.
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They shaped me. They gave me my children, carried moments of joy,
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pain, confusion, love, disappointment, and growth.
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But I no longer needed to keep every object simply because it had survived the marriage.
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I did not have to save every card to prove the relationship happened.
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I didn't need to preserve every apology to validate what I had endured.
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And I did not have to keep every romantic note simply because it had once made me feel chosen.
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I could look at it honestly and appreciate what I had once believed it to mean.
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I could recognize what I understood it to mean now. and then I could decide
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whether it still belonged in my life or not.
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The process was not only about emptying junk drawers. It was about emptying
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an entire chapter, not erasing it, not pretending it had not mattered,
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just refusing to leave it unsorted.
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And maybe that is what makes these drawers so personal. Not everything in them is junk.
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Sometimes an ordinary object becomes the container for an extraordinary memory.
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An old key may no longer open anything, but it wants to open the door to your first home.
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A tiny toy may look meaningless until you remember your child carrying it everywhere.
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A handwritten recipe may be stained and faded, but it holds the handwriting
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of someone whose voice you would give anything to hear again.
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Some things are not valuable because of what they are.
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They are valuable because of where they take us. And then there are other things
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we keep because we think we may need them again.
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That makes sense with screws, batteries, and cords. It becomes more complicated
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when the things we keep are emotional.
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We keep our guard up because trusting someone once cost us dearly.
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We keep people-pleasing because it once helped us feel safe.
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We rehearse every possible outcome because there was a time when being unprepared hurt.
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We keep old identities because even when they no longer fit, they're familiar.
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Some of the things cluttering our lives were once survival tools.
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And I think we need to offer ourselves some compassion for that.
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We didn't become guarded for no reason. We didn't become over-functioning,
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anxious, controlling, or afraid in a vacuum.
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Somewhere along the way, those responses helped us get through something.
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But a coping mechanism can save you in one season and confine you in the next.
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The walls that kept pain out may eventually keep love from getting in.
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The habit of handling everything alone may make you incredibly capable,
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but it may also make it impossible to receive help.
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The need to anticipate everyone else's moods may have helped you survive an
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unpredictable moment, but now it may keep you organizing your entire life around
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keeping other people comfortable.
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And at some point, the question becomes, do I still need this?
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Not, was I wrong for developing it, or should I be ashamed that I carried it?
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Just simply, does this still belong in the life I am becoming?
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I found another article that compared healing to cleaning out a junk drawer.
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And I've not stopped thinking about it, because what is the first thing you
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do when you decide to clean one out?
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You take everything out, and I mean everything. You empty the drawer onto the counter.
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And suddenly, the situation looks worse. Much worse.
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Before you started, the mess was contained. You could close the drawer and pretend it didn't exist.
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Now there's batteries rolling across the counter, rubber bands on the floor, pens everywhere.
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Receipts, mystery keys, birthday candles. Every random object you've collected
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for the last decade is spread out in front of you.
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And somewhere in the middle of the process, you think, why did I start this?
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The drawer is empty, but the counter is chaos.
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Anyone walking into the room at that moment wouldn't necessarily see progress. They'd see a mess.
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But the mess is not greater than it was before. You can just see it now.
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And that's often what healing looks like.
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You finally begin therapy, and now you're crying more than you were before.
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You begin setting boundaries and now people are angry with you.
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You leave an unhealthy relationship and now the silence feels unbearable.
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You stop people pleasing and people accuse you of changing.
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You slow down and discover you had been using busyness to avoid feeling.
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You start asking what you actually want, and you realize how much of your life
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has been built around what everyone else expected.
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You thought getting better would immediately feel peaceful. Instead, it feels disorienting.
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You think, I thought I was healing. Why do I feel worse?
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Because you emptied the drawer. Of course the counter's messy.
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You can't sort what you're unwilling to see, and you can't put your life back
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together differently while leaving everything hidden in the same old place.
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That is why I want someone listening today to hear this. You may not be falling
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apart. You may be sorting.
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There's a difference. Sorting means you have finally become willing to look at what is there,
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what still belongs, what needs a better place, what carries meaning,
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what you've outgrown, and what was never yours to carry in the first place.
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Sorting can look chaotic because clarity rarely arrives all at once.
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I've lived through lots of seasons when the old life no longer fit,
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but the new life had not fully formed.
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Divorce, starting over, when I left nursing, building my business,
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selling that business, relationships ending, beginning again, starting this podcast.
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Every transition came with a stretch
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of time when I did not know what the finished drawer would look like.
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And those in-between seasons can be terrifying. We want guarantees.
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We want evidence that the mess is leading somewhere.
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We want God to hand us a labeled organizer and say, the pain goes here,
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this lesson goes here, the relationship will make sense by next Thursday,
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and that unanswered prayer will be resolved before lunch.
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But life rarely works that way.
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Most of the time, we have to stand in the middle of the mess without knowing
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exactly what the ending will be.
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Looking back, I can see that many of the seasons when I believed I was losing
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my life, I was actually reconsidering how I wanted to live it.
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I was not always breaking down. Sometimes I was breaking open.
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I was not being emptied as a punishment. I was creating room.
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And I wasn't losing every piece of myself. I was discovering which pieces were truly mine.
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I think that is also why we have to be careful with phrases like,
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Everything happens for a reason.
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Sometimes that phrase is offered far too quickly. Sometimes it's spoken while
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someone is still standing in the wreckage.
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Terrible things sometimes happen because people make terrible choices.
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Bodies become sick, relationships end, prayers seem to go unanswered,
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innocent people suffer.
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We don't have to call it something good in order to believe that God can bring
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something meaningful from it.
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Those are not the same thing. Healing does not require us to pretend the injury was necessary.
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Forgiveness doesn't require us to rename harm as a blessing.
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And growth doesn't mean we have to be grateful someone hurt us.
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We can say, that should not have happened, and I'm still going to decide what happens next.
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We can also say, I would never have chosen this, but I will not waste what it has taught me.
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And we can say, this broke something in me, and with God's help,
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it will not be the end of me.
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We may not be able to choose everything that gets placed in our drawer,
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but eventually, we can choose what remains there.
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And I wonder how often we invite God into the organized parts of our lives,
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but we keep the junk drawer closed.
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We bring Him the polished prayers, the ones that sound faithful.
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God, guide me. God, bless my family. God, help me trust you.
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But underneath those prayers, maybe others were afraid to say out loud.
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God, I'm angry.
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I do not understand. I'm tired of being the strongman.
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I'm having trouble forgiving this. I trusted you. And this still happened.
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Those are the junk drawer prayers.
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They are tangled, unorganized. they contain contradictions, faith and anger,
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hope and disappointment, gratitude and grief, trust and fear.
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And maybe we worry God will open that drawer and be disappointed by what he finds.
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But he already knows what's there. He's not intimidated by our clutter.
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He's not shocked by our questions, and he doesn't recoil from the parts of our
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story that have not yet been organized into a testimony.
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He does not wait for us on the other side of the mess. He meets us while everything
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is still spread across the counter.
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And faith does not always make the sorting process quick.
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Sometimes faith is simply what helps us remain in the messy middle without giving up.
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It reminds us that confusion is not abandonment,
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that discomfort is not always danger, that an unfinished story is not a hopeless
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one, and that God can be present even when nothing around us looks organized.
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When you clean out a junk drawer, not everything gets thrown away. That matters too.
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Healing's not about becoming someone with no history.
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Some things stay, but they stay intentionally. Some things find a better place.
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The handwritten recipe may belong in a frame.
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The photograph may deserve to be displayed instead of buried beneath dead batteries.
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The note may still carry love, and some things have simply reached the end of their usefulness.
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The dried-out pen, the broken charger, the battery that's been dead since 2017.
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There is nothing noble about continuing to carry what no longer has life in it.
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The same is true emotionally Some experiences become wisdom Some memories become
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gratitude And some dreams are revised And some versions of ourselves are honored and released,
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Some things need to go The lie that you are difficult to love The belief that
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everyone else's comfort is your responsibility Those things need to go The idea
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that your worth is measured by whether someone chooses you.
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Or the shame attached to a decision you made when you were doing the best you knew how to do.
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The resentment you thought was protecting you but has quietly become its own prison.
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The identity built entirely around surviving. You're allowed to thank a survival
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strategy for getting you here and decide it does not get to lead you any further.
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You're allowed to keep the lesson without keeping the pain in the same place.
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You're allowed to let go of something, even though it once mattered.
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And you're allowed to keep something simply because it still carries love.
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The goal is not an empty drawer. The goal is an intentional one.
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Before we go, I want you to think about your own junk drawer,
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the actual one first. What's in there?
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What have you saved? What have you forgotten about?
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What are you keeping just in case? And what might those things say about the life you have lived?
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Then think about the drawer inside you. What have you placed there because you
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didn't know what else to do with it?
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A disappointment? A loss? An old identity?
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An unfinished conversation?
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Maybe a dream you stopped talking about? A version of yourself you're afraid to release?
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Maybe you have mistaken the messy middle for failure.
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Maybe your life feels more disorganized because you finally started doing the work.
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Maybe you're questioning things you once accepted. Or you're setting boundaries
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where you once stayed silent.
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Maybe feelings you thought you had moved past are sitting all over the counter.
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Do not confuse the counter with the outcome.
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Just because everything is spread out today doesn't mean it will remain there.
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You may be failing. You may not be going backward.
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You may not be falling apart. Maybe you are sorting, and perhaps healing is
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not becoming a person who's never had a junk drawer.
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Maybe it's becoming someone who is no longer afraid to open it.
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Someone willing to decide what is still useful and deserves a better place,
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what carries a memory worth keeping, and what is finally ready to be released.
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God is not waiting for you on the other side of the mess. He's with you in the
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middle of it, standing at the counter, helping you sort, one piece at a time.
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Until next time, if you're breaking, I want you to keep believing and becoming,
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well, that's already happening.
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And maybe go check whether any of those batteries actually work. Till next time.