Carrie's room looked like an absolute mess. Her parents had decided to do a little bit of spring cleaning, and so they made her go through everything in her room that she didn't want or didn't need. As a result, her room was filled with trash bags full of old clothes, toys, even food scraps.
Carrie didn't see why she needed to clean her room to begin with. True, her parents had guests over pretty much all the time; but that didn't mean that they would just march on into her room and mess with anything. According to her logic, everything in her room had a special place and a special purpose; so it was unnaturally difficult for her to part ways with a two-week old, moldy pizza crust and a broken punk rock CD case.
Nevertheless, she went through all of her old, useless possessions and threw them out. Before she was halfway done, she was surprised to see how much of her room had stood out. Without all of that clutter everywhere, Carrie was finally able to remember what color her carpet was.
After taking a quick break, Carrie decided to tackle her most perilous task yet: her closet. She slowly opened the sliding door, and, almost immediately, an avalanche of old, dirty clothes flew out of the closed space at such a rapid speed that it made her head spin. Once she emerged from the newly formed mountain of clothing, a small box slid down from the top of the pile and made its way to the floor. Once it hit the ground, the top popped open, and a song started to play.
Before she could go through her massive stack of clothes, Carrie suddenly stopped dead in her tracks. "That song", she thought to herself. "I haven't heard that song in ages"
She made her way to the music box, and picked it up from its spot on the ground. The inside of the box had a small inscription on it: "Lilium". It took her a while, but Carrie finally deduced that Lilium was the name of the song playing.
The sweet, melodious sounds of the music entranced her, and started sending back a tidal wave of old memories: memories of things she gained, things she lost, people she met, old friends who walked away from her, old friends whom she let walk away, every smile, every tear, every blessing from God; her entire childhood seemed to be enclosed in that tiny box, and was being lived out through that song.
Carrie sat down and continued to listen to the music box. She couldn't explain it, but somehow the music made her feel alive again. She felt like she didn't have to worry about anything anymore. She felt like everything around her didn't matter. All that existed to her, all that made her happy, was the music box.
She closed the box after a while, placed it on her bedside table, and got back to work. Once she was done, she opened the music box again, and went back to living through old memories, and nothing could have possibly made her happier.