Life Lesson #7: Just Let Stuff Go... Pt. 1

12/01/2011 Estreitta 2 Comments


Sorry for being so quiet in the blogosphere... life, computer issues, traveling, obligations all crept in at some point which has prevented me from posting regularly. I hope I haven't lost any readers, but I plan on writing more often and plan to be more consistent!

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LIFE LESSON #7: Just Let Stuff Go.... Pt. 1




At some point In my life I became a keeper. In fact, I come from a long line of keepers. My mom is a keeper, her mother, my Grandmother, was a keeper. I'm sure it didn't start there....

When I say keeper I mean, I remember when staying with my Grandmother one summer when I was about 15, she had 23 umbrellas in her closet. I remember counting them cause I was so amazed, cause I had never seen anyone own that many umbrellas!

Maybe I'm in denial but I don't think we compare to those Realtity TV Hoarders at all. But absolutely Yes, I know we've kept things we probably shouldn't. For instance, I have SOOOOO many t-shirts from youth camps, choir, charity events, bands, etc. But the deal is that I rarely wear the t-shirts, mostly cause I have a short torso and think it makes me look frumpy. LOL... I think I'm gonna get rid of most of them and just take a picture of the ones i want to remember, that's better than keeping them right? :)

So, after 36 years why the sudden revelation of this.... Well at the OneThing 2010 and 2011 New Year Encounter Services at my church, Shady Grove Church, I felt the Lord told me that I need to get prepared and get rid of my stuff because He's gonna call Erik and I into something and we will have to be ready to leave then and there... Eleven months later, I am finally being obedient and having a Yard Sale this weekend.

Can you believe it that we still had things that have been packed since we moved to Texas from Minnesota in 2004? We've accumulated so much stuff over our 10 years of marriage - 90% we don't even need or use. I think when the Lord asked me to "unburden my load" so to speak, it took me a few months to finally come to terms with it. Then a few months mentally preparing for it and speaking it into existing and now I am so willing a ready. When we went to Berlin this summer, I think the reality of going to the mission field became more of a reality to Erik and I. It was a firm but nice kick in the pants, so since getting back in August we just started going through our closets, the unpacked boxes and our kitchen cabinets and started getting rid of everything we haven't used in a while. I put close to 25 pairs of shoes in the sale and literally a ton of Clothes.

It's rather freeing to just say get rid of this, get rid of that... and not feel like you are loosing a memory. Some things I started to second guess then my dear friend Rhonda Woods, who helped me organize all my junk (she has also graciously agreed to help with the yard sale on Friday) would give me this look then i would say, "ok It's got to go!" During this whole 3 hour process, she was the most wonderful friend and truly went above and beyond the call of duty, but i knew I couldn't do it all on my own!!!

I think that is the hardest thing about letting stuff go, is that we tie a memory with an item. Then we hold on to something so tightly because we have such "fond" memories of it, when the thing has no value to it whatsoever. It's just sitting there collecting dust.

So we Got the stuff organized and tagged, Got the Permit, Posted on Craigslist, and tweeted and Facebooked about it! So No Turning back, come Friday we be having our yard sale!

We have also decided that NO Matter what... On Saturday It is going to the Salvation Army (I guess they Pick up for Free)... so it will not come back into the house again :)

While looking though some old notes and papers I had I came across this little card and I thought it was God's gentle nudge telling me that getting all this stuff out is in his plan!




Side Note: Part of my organizational plan is to have a digital copy of journals, poems, songs and stuff I had written back in the day. I will be posting most of them, but back dating them from when I wrote them. I am not sure if they will come up or not as new blogs, but just in case you want to read some of this stuff you can go back and look as far back as the 90's for some of it over the coming weeks :)











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