Stuff...

The bane, the blessing, and keeping a right perspective

Our Ladies’ Christmas Tea this year provided a lovey chance to pull out old books and great-grandmother’s china. My friend Ronda had a collection of adorable tiny teapots that gave it all the finishing touch it needed.

Kraig and I joke that if we ever reach a point where we need to rent a storage unit, it will be a clear sign that we need to purge. We would rather purge than pay to store stuff. The thing is, we have a good bit of space in our house, so we have a way to go before we must take that step. But even with space there are times when the stuff presses in, and right now it’s high time we got rid of some things. I’m working through some of those items this week in anticipation of family visiting at Christmas.

I am plagued, though, with a personality that has a hard time letting go. Once in a while it’s an easy decision: I actually have some books I don’t feel any need to keep, particularly old curriculum from when the kids were younger, or sometimes there’s a book I bought for a book club but didn’t like enough to keep on my shelf. I know I can get rid of older financial papers and receipts once we’ve passed the right number of years…if I get around to sorting through them. Then there are the continual cummulations of cardboard boxes and glass jars and plastic containers and grocery bags. I’m happy to get rid of those, but we don’t have local recycling pickup…so I have to be deliberate about taking them somewhere.

Yeah, those are the easier things to eliminate. The hard things to consider are parts of heritage passed down through family generations, or curios we’ve collected over the course of our own lives. I have books that were my grandmother’s and her sisters. My great-grandfather sold books for Dodd, Mead & Company early in the 20^th century, and he brought gorgeous editions of books home to his daughters. Tennyson, Longfellow, and Grimm’s Fairy Tales with illustrations by Arthur Rackham are just a few now on my shelf. Then there are other old pieces like brass candlesticks and a set of my great-grandmother’s china, maple bedsteads and a cedar chest. I regularly use my grandmother’s potato masher, and a “Baptist church spatula” from my mother. Kraig’s grandmother’s painting lives on one wall alongside a quilt made by a close family friend, a ceramic wall hanging created by an artisan potter I met in Mexico, and two original ink sketches Kraig and I got from a couple who were downsizing right at the point we married and had nothing for our walls. After going through Kraig’s parents’ curios this summer with his siblings, we now have more treasures from around the world, not to mention the photos I need to scan and distribute to family.

All of these things and many others make our house home, and homey, but they do take up space. There are times when I wonder why I hang on to them, or I realize the empty value of stuff in light of a finite life. Already there are many things we don’t know the story of—the original owner was gone before we thought to ask, or even knew to. This is a loss, even while we treasure the beauty of the piece that remains. Sometimes when I sink into a chair and ponder all of the potential worlds waiting in the books on our shelves, or I relish the beauty of a piece of art, a niggling question flits through my mind: “What if something happened and all of this was destroyed?” I usually shy away from that thought, because I can’t bear to imagine it. And that makes me wonder if I would be able to accept the loss. I’m reminded, too, that our time on earth is finite. We felt that this summer as we went through Kraig’s parents’ things. I think of it when I read an older friend’s note about preparing to downsize and move to a retirement community, something my parents did a few years ago. The older I get, the more my own focus shifts.

I find these thoughts eventually turn me back toward God, and the undercurrent of reassurance that he holds me and those I love, and that, in the end, I don’t need to worry about all of the things. I can enjoy them now, but I don’t have to cling to them, or worry about what would happen if they were torn away from me. In fact, when I really lean into Christ, I am more willing to share our things with others because I remember they aren’t really mine to begin with. When it comes down to it, the hope of a new creation outweighs the wealth of earth, and knowing I will have eternity to learn more about God and learn more from him is a comfort and encouragement. I will never know him completely, and there will always be more to discover. For that matter, there will always be more beauty to create, beauty that will glorify him and lift others up. And that truth is more lovely than any book, painting, piece of furniture…or potato masher.

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If you want to add new, beautiful books to your library, be sure to head to Bandersnatchbooks.com starting this Friday for Holiday sales. Most books will be 40% off, including my trilogy! (If you’re local to me, I have copies of all the Bandersnatch titles for sale.)

The Daughter of Arden Trilogy

You can find links to more of my writing at A Shaft of Sun Through the Rain and my old blog, Willing, Wanting, Waiting.

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