Resolving: Stuffage

During the last 48 hours or so, as Mr. Visionary and I have had our opportunity to partake of the gastroinstestinal virus that has been passed through the family, I have had much time to stare at the ceiling (or the bathroom flooring) and consider. As I laid there mulling over how advantageous it is to have a bathroom floor in the same shade as one’s hair, I also spent time thinking through those issues on which the Lord has recently had His finger in our life.  

 On my personal To-Do List, pegged for the near future, is to clean out the attic. My goal is to rid our lives of 80% of the stuff accumulated there, but as of yet, I do not know what form this will take. Will it be that 80% of the furniture,  clothes, and ‘stuff’ is gone equally from each category, or will it be more general, in that just 80% of the bulk is gone from the attic in general? As I pondered, I realized that I truly have no idea what is in many of the boxes. So I pondered some more, trying hard to remember.

 What I remembered was numbing. Several moves ago, we were to spend nine months renting the home of some friends while the Dad went to a ministry school. Knowing that we were moving again in nine months, we used one of the bedrooms to store our ‘extra stuff’. Never in the nine months did we break into the stash, nor did we feel a need. Our next move was into a tiny-for-us house, without room for our ‘extra stuff’. The same stored boxes went to my in-laws’ three-car garage to sit while moth and rust (and mice) did their work until our next move.

 The miniscule percentage of those items that I kept remind me of my attic now. How much do we really need to live? Really. Need. Not to necessarily live as the world does, in our culture, at this time…but to simply live? And how much of the ‘extra stuff’ keeps us so busy working to buy, use and maintain it that we have little time for God or the work He has given us?  How sick and tired of the stuff is sick and tired enough?

 I will be working through this some more, as I am sensing that this is only the beginning ~ the first few wobbly steps on a journey to a new kind of freedom...

 “…And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” John 8:32.