Stuff

Last night felt like the kind of night you get at the start of summer wind down. The air had cooled and dried off with just a tickle of a breeze and the night critter sounds were at their best. I didn’t crawl between the sheets until after 11:00 and then instead of drifting off as I should have, I laid there just listening to the sounds and enjoying the breeze entering through the open window. At that time of night our neighborhood has quieted down enough where there are not even any cars zooming by to disturb the magic of the moment. It was a nice way to end a very nice day.

Church was great as always. I did allow myself to admit to some fears and have prayer regarding that. I have the hardest time admitting to fear. It always feels like such a huge lack of faith but it is what it is too. Anyway, admitting to and receiving prayer was helpful. Am I without fear now? No. But I don’t feel alone with it anymore either which helps. God is always here for us.

The girls decided they did not want to go to softball but instead wanted to spend time with their old mom and dad. It was fun. It was especially satisfying that I kicked everyones butts in Wii bowling. I may be arthritic, on meds for everything known to man and just this side of broken…but this woman can still be a challenge. Arrr…arrr….arr. Although everyone laughed uncontrollably when upon throwing my Wii bowling bowl a loud pop could be heard coming from my thrown hip. They may have eased up on the competition just to try and avoid an ER visit.

Today I start trying to get the house back in shape. The bedrooms are done with the floors and now all that has been displaced needs to find a home. We had been sorting through various items already and have some boxes of books that go to our favorite store in the world “Gently Used Books” for book credit trade, other boxes that are designated for Ebay that I have to begin photographing, some items for Freecycle, some items to be shipped to my mother and the rest to our local landfill. Thankfully that last item is the smallest.

I’m really glad we get to mail my mom some stuff. This is a lady who lives on….get this….9K a year in social security. That is right…9 and three zero’s. Somehow she makes it work. She should write a book on how to make it stretch. She of course isn’t bogged down by all the “got to have” items that the rest of the country feels are necessities. But, of course, we are sending her one item we want her to have….an answering machine. Part of what makes her life so rich is her network of friends and activities. The lady is never home. (Thus the answering machine) She has one friend who is in a wheelchair whom she loves to “visit”. She is assisting this lady but never would say she is. It is more of the “Well while I was there……” She always speaks of what her friend is to her instead. I love that quality in my mom. Other friends she just hangs with at each others apartments and doing dinners for each other. These are also the friends that keep in touch with me to let me know how moms “condition” is. They are God sends.

Lets see, what else are we sending her. Oh yes….she is concerned because even though she doesn’t watch much television she will no longer have her three antenna channels once the digital takes over. So……my brother had bought her a DVD player for Christmas and we have just thinned out our DVD collection. So we are sending her maybe 40 movies. We figure that should get her through the winter before we need to send more.

Anyway…what is my point? Like many other people we know, we have become accumulators. We have “STUFF”. Stuff that is weighing us down. It has us not wanting to acquire anymore stuff just for the sake of stuff. Bad stewardship. But we are finding homes for our stuff. It is important to try to find homes for our stuff instead of filling those ever burdened landfills with our neglect and ignorance. And with that in mind it is important to start the reconditioning process in our minds and behaviors of how and why we acquired in the first place. What voids do we try to fill when we go shopping but that are left empty? It certainly isn’t our garages. They tend to be bursting the doors with our overflow. It tends to be matters of our hearts. Time to turn our hearts to that which can fill us. We all know who that is.