Back to Basics

I haven't posted in awhile--not because there's nothing going on, but because there's so MUCH going on. I'm currently emptying out my backyard of the large plastic play equipment--turning clutter into cold, hard cash. My first auction just finished and I made $61. It's ridiculous how pleased I am about that. I read an article many years ago (I think it was Erma Bombeck) about how you could get so sucked into selling stuff at your garage sale (old timey, lowtech, less effective version of eBay) that you would sell your brand new iron that you just bought for $20 and had never used for $5 just because somebody asked for it. I'm now looking around my house at almost everything I own, wondering how much somebody would pay me for it. We've already been through the years of accumulating and acquiring and raising kids and saving the stuff for posterity (DH and I are both first children of parents who lived through the Depression and the inclination for pack ratty-ness has been very strong in both of us). We gathered and inherited and saved the little treasures of our children's childhoods for the day when we would pass on the memories of all the generations into their hands. And I assumed that that day would be when they were talking together in hushed whispers about what to do with Mama.
But I am finding, to my amazement, that the day is dawning when I'm still relatively young. I'm tired of dusting. I want freedom. I want to be able to live in a little IKEA efficiency apt. Why not give them the stuff they like now? They're going to get it eventually anyway and I can visit it any time I want to (if I behave myself :-) This is such a new point of view for me--and the more I think about it, the better I like it.

Over ten years ago, DH and I got a word from the Lord to streamline. We didn't know what that meant or what we should do. But now, it makes sense. We need to be able to move freely wherever He directs without the anchor of lots of possessions. Yesterday we heard about a mission trip to Colorado to work for a week in the ministry of a friend of ours. Right now we're not free enough to pick up and go. But we will be soon. And the thought of that gives us more joy than our stuff ever did.