YOU KNOW LIFE HAS CHANGED...WHEN

At the end of three weeks of Brazil and warm breezes, unending fruit  and new friends, I'm sitting here at my kitchen table in Berrien Springs, Michigan, surrounded by mounds of mail with more things to add to my list of things to do.  I cringe at the thought of 30 phone messages that I need to hear...and return.


Ordinarily--well, what has been ordinarily extraordinary for 27 years--this would be a quiet Sunday evening, the beginning of a predictably hectic week, but not too much that a little bit of planning and pacing and prayer can't handle.


Instead, it's a quiet Sunday evening, the beginning of an unpredictably chaotic week--a  downhill slide into sorting, packing, selling, throwing and more clutter than my house as ever seen in all its life.  Even my praying places are taken.  Is this the undoing of my world?


Even though I've always considered myself an intentional non-hoarder, this week my whole life is crawling out from under beds, down off shelves, out of drawers.  Stirring memories and dust.  Emptying corners.  

The blanket on top of the entertainment center 
went for $3...until my honest friend went home, 
checked online, & returned with $15 more.

I'll be taking a thousand dusty trips into the past.  When was the last time I used this cookbook?  What era of my life do 48 canning jars remind me of?  Would any of the boys care if I sell Aunt Peggy's crystal stemware--the set we always used at Sabbath dinners?  And is the  Lady Godiva Teddy Bear, boldly embroidered as chocolate PR, a whole lot of use anymore?  The chocolate was eaten 14 years ago.  Will anyone tell the gracious person who gave me the pricey dried-flower wreath with spider webs connecting its  crumbling petals that her appreciation will always be remembered?  It'll never survive storage.  SNEEZE.   Dust always settles on the past.

Nothing I can't get in Lebanon...if I need it!

But 
I'm also staring the blank look of the future in the face.   Will I value my chipped china in ten years?  What will this 15-year-old down comforter look like after it's stored for a decade?  Will I even remember that-I-never-needed-but-once-owned a green flower pot?  If I don't have my own guinea pig cage, will it affect my future  appreciably?  What's Larry's chances of rollerblading at 70?  Will I ever use this LaLanne juicer...ever?  After 40 years of knowing tennis is bad for our relationship, will these rackets be any good for us in the future?  

Is it hard to talk to myself like this?  Not really!  I'm glad to get rid of the unnecessary. I love the feeling of living lighter.  And when our "My Trash, Your Treasure" event is all over....when all this stuff has walked out of my garage door one way or another....when the scuffs on the walls show and my house echoes, nobody will have taken a single memory from me.  








By the way...about those thirty telephone messages.  Well, you know for sure  life has changed when only three of them are from real, living people who actually want to talk to us.  The rest are the same tele-machine's ominous message:

"In the event of death or serious illness..."   DELETE.  "In the event of death or serious illness..."  DELETE.  "In the event of death or serious illness..."  DELETE.   Twenty seven times.

Is it unnerving?   Not at all.  I'm thankful for a past of countless blessings.   I'm at peace with the present.   And the future is safely in God's hands.