Binge and Purge

When I was a kid, I moved once a year on average. My dad wasn’t military; he was just restless. So besides those precious (horrific) journals I wrote about a few weeks ago, I have very little in the way of childhood memorabilia. I learned to stifle my inner packrat and live with whatever could be stuffed into a few boxes. Two items were especially dear to me (don’t laugh): a plush Snoopy toy with a missing nose and the Walt Disney song book. At some point I started recording my various addresses on the inside covers of the song book. Both flaps are completely filled.

I don’t know how many times I had to yank these treasures out of the trash during one of my parents’ packing frenzies. I learned to be crafty, to pack them along with my clothes. Surely no one would throw out my clothes?

When Kevin and I moved into our current house, I settled down. Way down. I envisioned my grandchildren visiting us here some day. I filled every nook and cranny. We built a storage shed in the back yard to create more nooks and crannies, and those too were filled. I accumulated my way through my thirties. I accumulated children who joined right in with me. Like most of the rest of America, our life became about managing our stuff.

Then God redirected our path, asking us to live among the poor. In case we were tempted to ignore this, He shook up our own economic realities to hasten our obedience. At the same time, my eyes were open to the futility—and the burden—of all this stuff. I don’t want my kids to grow up to be stuff managers. I want something bigger for them. I want less for them. So the purge is under way. In the past several months, I have hauled out a couple dozen trash bags full of toys and clothes. I have thrown away most of their artwork and school work. Today, we have a tub of stuffed animals, a tub of hard toys, a tub of books, and a tub of games. Four simple tubs. I feel like one of those people who lose half their weight and have a new lease on life. I feel free!

But I still feel a little sad and guilty, too. Though I’ve explained to the kids the importance of scaling down and being free from our stuff, I still feel like I have to sneak the toys out of the house. In a careless moment, I left a bag of “trash” out, and Brooka stumbled on it. She asked me what I was planning to do with the animals in it—the ones she had spent hours painting. It was one of those ethically-challenging parenting moments: Do I fudge the truth, or do I just ’fess us?

I told her they were headed for the trash, and her eyes immediately filled with tears. (Remember, this is my very not-sensitive child. God help me if it had been one of the others.) “But those are really, really special to me,” she whimpered, offering me another opportunity for parental growth. I did something then that I wish my dad had done for me. I got down on the floor, looked her in the eye, and asked her to forgive me. Then I let her pick out an animal for each year she’s been alive—a total of six out of the dozen or so in the trash. She seemed to think that was fair, pulled them out, and went on her way.

I went downstairs and found my Walt Disney song book. (My Snoopy dog is already packed in the kids’ stuffed animals. I still have them both.) There’s a fine line between allowing your stuff to control you and allowing it to positively shape the moments of your life. Lord, help me as I figure this out.

Fabulous

I’m teetering on the brink of fabulous. I’m two-thirds of the way there.

Yesterday I woke up to find a flower from my husband with a card that said, “Happy 8/12 Birthday.” (I remember just enough about math to know that’s the same as two-thirds.) Yep, two-thirds of the way between 39 and 40.

For the better part of my 30s, I’ve been preaching the gospel of “Fabulous at Forty” and writing “One step closer to Fabulous!” on my friends’ birthday cards. My reasoning was that most women in their 20s are trying to figure out their place in the world (and, let’s be honest, looking for a husband), and for a lot of us, our 30s are our little kid years: planning for them, making them, carry them, pushing them out, feeding them, changing them, teaching them, raising them. I started that journey at 28 ½ and end it, 11 years later, with my “baby” headed to preschool in the fall.

To get me through those chubby, sleep-deprived, sour-smelling years, I started dreaming about how fabulous I would be at 40. At the very least, I figured I would at least like my hair. Maybe have some grown-up furniture and drive a car with a sun roof? I’ll have time and energy to spend on me, right? I’ll have outgrown all those pesky sin issues, right? Maybe I'll even start eating vegetables. Yes, it will be fabulous. I will be fabulous.

So now that I’m here, teetering and all, what does it look like on the other side of 39? It certainly looks different. I’m moving for the first time since I turned 30. I’m giving away half of my household possessions and preparing to live in a much smaller place with no yard, no closets, no bathtub. (It does have air conditioning and room for the kids to rollerskate in the living room. Give and take.) I'm essentially unemployed. I spend the great majority of my time in a 1999 minivan. At 35, that would not have seemed so fabulous. But here’s the thing—at nearly 40, I’m more in tune with what really matters. I'm not so concerned about impressing people. I'm more concerned with who I am than what I do or how I look doing it. I’m more likely to feel joyful, no matter what my circumstances. I’m more thankful for the things I’ve got than disappointed in the things I haven’t got.

When October rolls around, I’ll still have stringy hair and jiggly arms. I’ll still make biting remarks that I regret and struggle with chronic impatience. But in the ways that are most important to me, I think I’m gonna be pretty darn fabulous.

Wanting and Waiting

What is that restless longing I feel way down deep within me? And why does it seem to be making its way closer and closer to the surface? Every day, I am ever-so-slightly more anxious, more dissatisfied, more aware that I was not made for this world.

Maybe it’s age? Is this a racing-toward-40 phenomenon? Or a natural feeling that results from nagging debt, fighting children, sickening oil spills, and lingering wars? It’s true, I wasn’t nearly as dissatisfied in this world when it seemed more pleasant, when it was all about me. In high school, my only restless thought was getting out of my little hick town and escaping to California. In college, I was anxious for the next fun fix and the excitement of starting my own life on my own terms. “Don’t come back now, Lord! I have things to do: marriage, children, travel, a meaningful career. This is my time!"

Larry Crabb writes, “Satan’s masterpiece is not the prostitute or the skid-row bum. It is the self-sufficient person who has made life comfortable, who is adjusting well to the world and truly likes living here, a person who dreams of no better place to live, who longs only to be a little better—and a little better off—than he already is.”

Guilty as charged.

And now? I’ve still got goals, but they’re different now. They’re things like loving better, giving more, living a fully surrendered life. The biggest dream of all can’t even happen in this lifetime. It will only come in the next, when I finally go Home. How I hope to be greeted by my Father with the words, “Well done, faithful one.”

“Come on back, any time, Lord,” I think to myself more and more often. In the meantime, I wait, thankful that He’s given me so much to enjoy in this life. Still, the longing intensifies.

“The Spirit’s masterpiece is the man or woman who much prefers to live elsewhere,” Crabb continues, “who finds no deep joy in the good things of this life, who looks closely in the mirror and yearns to see something different, whose highest dream is to be in the presence of the grace-filled Father. It is the person whose life here is consumed with preparing to meet Him there.”

Yeah, that’s it.

My Life in Boxes

I’m going through boxes. Nostalgic baby clothes. College text books. My grandmother’s heirlooms. Long-forgotten pictures. Old broken junk. School uniforms that my kids won’t need for another four years. I’m wading through it all, or at least trying to coax myself into it. This past week I stumbled on the “Really Old Stuff” box. It’s been nine years since I’ve sat down and looked carefully at the contents of this box, and I’m not sure that’s long enough. There are things in this box that should never be seen again—by me and certainly not by anyone else.

The problem with being a journaler and a saver is that you always have a record of what you journaled and saved. When you’ve been a journaler and a saver since the age of 11, this is not necessarily a good thing.

I like to think that I was a good kid, a smart, ambitious, not-following-the-crowd kind of kid. I have a nice collection of childhood memories tucked away in a dusty room in my mind, and when I glimpse in that room from time to time, I generally smile. But the box of Really Old Stuff reminds me of a different me. Inside the box I find a girl who insists on using the word “Barf!” in every sentence. Who is all-consumed with herself and complains ceaselessly. Who is critical of everyone around her—and it’s so obvious it’s because she’s in some way jealous of everyone around her. Her concerns are shamefully trivial, her aspirations no higher than getting some lame, pimply-faced boy to notice her. As hard as I look, I can find no redeeming qualities in her. Which is why I want to trash—burn—the box of Really Old Stuff.

But I don’t. For some reason, it’s easier for me to get rid of Grandma’s heirlooms than my seventh-grade journal. I think it’s because as much as I hate reading who I was, I love realizing how far I’ve come. How much I’ve been changed. The mountains, the oceans, all of creation may testify to the existence of God, but an even more powerful witness to His grace and mercy is the transformation I can see in myself.

I am nowhere near where I want to be on my journey toward Him, but I am much closer today than I was 25 years ago. And where will I be in another 25? Gagging at the journals of my 30-something self? Maybe. But I hope I'll also be marveling again that He loves me way too much to ever let me stay the same.

A Mom's Confession

I am grateful. God knows I am grateful. I couldn’t ask for better kids, and the greatest privilege of my life is getting to be their mom. I have chosen to be a joyful character in their story. Mostly. But can I just be honest for a minute? There are things about this whole mom thing that I am not going to miss. I preach the “savor every moment” message as much as anyone, but there are things that simply aren’t savory in any form or fashion. There are brief moments throughout the day when I dream of my late-50s utopia:

Doing the laundry minus the ever-present smell of urine.

A bathroom free of globby toothpaste remnants.

Getting out of a restaurant for under twenty bucks. (I know this is going to get much worse before it gets better.)

Just going to bed. No singing, reading, lunch-packing, tooth-brushing, diapering, watering, or warning. Just dropping into bed when I’m tired. I can’t even imagine it.

Having uninterrupted thoughts at some time other than 5 a.m.

No more gift buying for birthdays of random classmates or teacher appreciation day.

Finding stuff where I left it.

Driving a vehicle that fits into a “compact” spot and stays clean for longer than eight minutes.

Visiting only the grown-up section of the library, checking out a book for myself, maybe actually reading it, and—the icing on the cake—not spending two hours looking for it on the day it’s due back.

No fighting over who had the chair first. Or who loves the dog more. Or who fights less.

Going through a box of Band-aids a year instead of one a week. And not finding them, soggy and smelly, in the carpet a few days later.

Leaving the house with only my purse. (When I was still working, I couldn’t get out the door with fewer than seven bags. No really. I counted.)

I feel better just for having written it down. Of course the real reason I wrote it down is to read, and read, and read again once this is all over and I’m trying to remember why in the world I sometimes just wanted them all to grow up.

Stories, Part II

In his book A Million Miles in a Thousand Years, Don Miller argues that you become the character in the story you’re living. And if you want to find out what that story is, he says to take a good look at your ambitions. In other words, if my ambition is to go to a good college so I’ll get a good job so I can live in a fancy house with a flat-screen TV, that’s the story my life’s going to tell. It’s not really a bad story—it’s just not all that interesting. And if that’s the story I’m living, then the character I become is probably someone who spends a lot of time studying, working, mowing the grass, and watching TV. These are things that need to be done—well, minus the TV part—but am I willing to allow them to be my story? Is this the character I want to be?

No one gets to write their own story—we’ve all learned by now that nearly every circumstance, and certainly everyone else’s actions, are out of our control. But we do get to choose the kind of character we get to be. If you think about it, there’s a lot of power there.

I read a book about a woman who endured a nasty scandal with her husband. It was the kind of stuff most of us get sick just thinking about, and she did, too. But when the scandal broke, she didn’t have to spend a lot of time deciding how to respond. She had decided years earlier who she was going to be in her story, and nothing would change that. Her ambition was to be a faithful, forgiving, and persevering wife, and that became her story. Whether I agree with her decisions or not, I have to respect her unwavering conviction to being the kind of wife she had decided to be.

My own experience with this is less profound, but it has stuck with me for several years. I remember a time about six years ago when I would haul my big pregnant self to work all day, then drive an hour to retrieve my two- and four-year-olds from the babysitter, then come home to make dinner, do the dishes, and spend “quality” time with my family. The only thing I wanted to do was rant at everyone around me, take a bath, and go to bed. I did that on multiple occasions, until I realized that wasn’t who I wanted to be in my story. I didn’t have those words for it at the time, but I knew this was not what I wanted my young children to remember about me. So I changed my story—not the circumstances, but my words, my actions, my attitudes. Sometimes I was so syrupy sweet I thought surely my family would call me on it. They didn’t. It felt fake at first, like I was putting on a performance and not being true to myself. Sometimes that’s how it feels when you change who you are in your story. It’s not natural. But over time, it becomes natural. Over time, it becomes a better story, and we become better characters.

This is one success I had amid a million failures. But I remember it well enough to agree with Don Miller’s theory that you become the character in the story you’re living. We get to choose what that character will be like—grumpy, stressed out mom saddled with too many responsibilities, or grateful, joyful mom enjoying each one of her responsibilities. In a world in which so much is out of our control, it’s a question filled with power and hope: Who do I choose to be in this story?

My Thoughts Exactly

If you read nothing else this week, please read this, "Your Friendship on Facebook," another column from my friend Meredith. I am deeply fascinated (OK, concerned) with the issues she brings up here. In this new society in which a piece of hand-held metal is treated with more value than the person standing next to us, I am preoccupied with how to teach my children the value of real community.

Even if you don't share my concern, read it just for the clever blazer analogy.