Things

"The more possessions you own, the more your possessions own you".  I heard this quote years ago on an Adventures in Odyssey" episode (I listened to Adventures in Odyssey til I was older than I would like to admit!) and it stuck with me all these years.

As my sweet Farmer Boy is busy sending letters of interest to schools in Africa, starting his student teaching, and gearing up for his LAST SEMESTER of college, I am starting to look around at all the stuff we have accumulated.  I must admit, the thought of packing up all this stuff makes me dizzy.  Bleh - I dislike packing!  As we think about a big move to Africa (Lord willing), I can't imagine how much stuff we will have to leave in storage as we will just be taking a couple of suitcases when we go.  So my New Year's job is to begin downsizing.  It's refreshing to get rid of stuff and feel more free! 

The problem I keep facing is how sentimental I am!  I still have petals from the first wild rose my Farmer Boy picked for me about a year before we started dating .. thankfully I pressed them in the book of Ruth so they aren't taking up any room. ;)  More difficult are the many stuffed animals I have from childhood, the baby stuff I have been saving for our Someday Babies (which feel like more our Maybe Babies now), and the cards written by people I love.  That isn't even touching the dishes and kitchen stuff!  So, I think what helps me is thinking that we can give away some of our stuff to someone who can use it!  I've always been the kind of person who believes that the good china, that special dress, the quilt great grandma made should be used because every day is a special occasion.  I hate to think of waiting all my life to use something special and then never get to enjoy the beauty or fun ... Because of this I hate to think of dishes and useful things of ours sitting in boxes while we live in a different continent.  I'm not really sure what we will do, but I hope that we can give a lot of our stuff to others to use!  I wish we had a little house to set up cute with all our darling wedding gifts and things we have collected and use it as a guest house for missionaries visiting the states, or someone who needs a place to live ... wouldn't that be so fun!?

Well, this is a rather rambled post - just something that has been on my mind a lot over this past week and probably will be on my mind for some time to come as we prepare to move.  I don't want to be owned by things that are not even close to the importance of the people we come into contact with on this earth.