It's Thursday. Most of the furniture is gone, and most of our belongings are still sitting on the floors, every room with its own gradually diminishing pile waiting for the random movements of various family members to get it, eventually, to its final resting place.
The last 2 months for me have been overflowing with concern about what is going to happen to all the STUFF in my house. Some of it has financial value. Some has sentimental value. And some of it has pure practical value.
Many people have said, it's just STUFF. And it is. So why is it so hard to put it in the landfill, or give it to the second hand store?
Maybe God can use even my seemingly silly desires to reduce, reuse and recycle to bless the lives of people in my community. As I have changed my perspective from the financial and practical value of the STUFF, and started thinking about the PEOPLE who will benefit from it, I find peace about it all. Even the things that will go in the garbage.
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I visited a very old friend yesterday, under the pretense of giving her some of the STUFF from my house. As I climbed the front steps, thinking about how many things are still left on my To Do list, and knowing that she is anticipating a loving reunion, I thought to myself:
This isn't about YOU.
It's not about the STUFF you have to move out of your house.
Those thoughts were like a burden lifting off of my shoulders and I cried a little. What a relief! It's not about me. I can be free to do whatever the situation needs me to do, because I'm not burdened with an agenda or a To Do list.
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I read this today: "We all love when our vehicle is clean and shiny. But the car's purpose is not to stand out as an attractive machine; it is to move the people in the car."
While we may debate whether or not the car can have two different purposes, it is nevertheless the case that a car moves people. And it is up to us to choose what is most valuable, to decide where to spend our time, and who to focus on as we perform whatever mundane responsibility we have to perform.
1 comment:
It was really great seeing you last night. As I drove home, so many thoughts came to mind of things we could have chatted about but simply didn't get around to. All good things. It's funny... or interesting... or both; you had mentioned at the gathering how our group of friends from way back in the day had just clicked in a magical way. I treasure those friendships, and I was thinking about how, to this day, I struggle to connect with people while simultaneously needing those kinds of connections, whilst (also simultaneously) being kind-of anti social. It's a weird mix that I'm just now coming to grips with, and luckily I have those magical connections, otherwise I might not realize it's possible to connect with people. Growing up the thought in the back of my head was always about career, and future, and how to provide needed things - and what I missed, was that it's people and connections that are important.
The first car I ever owned, I got when I graduated with my associates degree...and it's the same car I'm driving now. I used to keep it fairly clean, because, on my mission I learned the value of maintaining a vehicle - but now...it's not like it's a teenager's car that has a back seat full of garbage, but it's not like I'm trying to impress anybody either. But It gets me around; there's no heat in the winter, no AC in the summer, and driving everywhere with windows down is a very different experience than being cut off from the environment. The olfactory experience alone is very mind-opening. You'll be driving along and be surrounded by a bog-water smell in places you didn't think there was much water to speak of, and then instantly that smell will be gone - replaced by the most delicious low-n-slow BBQ pork aroma. I have a sense that there's some deeper meaning in that that I haven't quite figured out, and I'm fairly certain it's reminiscent of some of the concepts in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Good Luck on your Journey.
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