These brutal little boogers that depend on me day & night, night & day, practically leave me NO time to keep up with my blog. I mean, how rude are they?! If I don't report to my "followers" (do I even have any?) about my experiment with "7", how will they sleep at night?
Rest easy, my friends. I have squandered several minutes of my day to share my "possessions" experience with you. You are very welcome!
Month three of this crazy life experiment is referred to as "possessions" - can you see where this is going? Do me a favor - picture your house: every room, every closet, every cabinet, every storage space...are they all full? Like, stuffed to the gills FULL? I can sadly admit that mine are...or at least they were before I read this chapter.
I don't know if it's an American thing, or a female thing, or a 21st century THING - but for some unknown reason we (insert Americans, women, modern day people) feel the need to buy stuff. Lots. Of. Stuff. We are tempted by so many consumer products I won't even pretend to take the time to list them all. They scream, "buy me", "take me home", "you NEED me" and we listen! I was literally appalled at the amount of items in my home that were either not being used, duplicates, or so insignificant I couldn't even figure out why they were in my house - and I'm a fairly reasonable shopper.
This chapter truly touched my heart. There were several entries that had me sitting in a heap in the middle of my stuffed closet in tears, ashamed of how many "things" I have. How many things I've wasted money on. How many things I have the luxury of buying that so many people don't. At one point I burst into a crying fit over having 2 crockpots. "For the love of Pete, WHY do we have 2 crockpots. There are struggling families who could really use this crockpot!" At that particular moment my husband looked at me as if I were the craziest woman in Wyoming and told me I should stop reading this book for a few days! I didn't listen - I read on! Mulling over the excess in our home. The excess in our lives.
The experiment was to give away 7 items a day for an entire month...now even I don't have THAT much stuff (pat myself on the back) so we decided to do 1 item a day, each week, for a month. I'm saddened to say this was incredibly easy, we purged our house multiple times - donated to the safe house, several families in need, a garage sale fundraiser - and I couldn't even tell you what we got rid of... My husband was all about me getting into this book and being so motivated to serve our Heavenly Father, purging our house, etc. But I will quote him - "Honey that's so great, I'm really proud of you, but don't go through my stuff." He has a special conversation with God just waiting for him! That's all I'm going to say about that!
I realized I had been holding onto ridiculous amounts of baby clothes (how many onesies are really that sentimental) and my old "teaching" clothes - telling myself I will wear them again one day when I go back to the classroom. I again cried tears of shame when I realized so many other people could have used these items...and there they sat, in a storage tub, helping NO ONE. Shame on me.
God spoke to me through this experiment. "What possessions are in your heart?" These THINGS that mean nothing - that's what you have hidden in your heart? No. I have the love of Christ in my heart. I have the love of sharing in my heart, the love of compassion, the love of serving, the love of spreading God's word & His love in my heart. Don't let your possessions define who you are. Let your actions define who you are. Listen and let God define who you are.
Now, you may picture me sitting in an empty house with only the basic necessities of life surrounding me...that's a lovely image...it's wrong, but still a very lovely image! I know as creatures of this human race we like "our stuff" and I think in a way God meant for us to like and desire certain things - everyone has a thing - but He never meant for it to control you, or define you, or harden you. At the end of this month we were making ZERO trips to the store "just to shop around", we had purged every unused article of clothing from all 4 closets, swept through the kitchen and linen pantry, and did some serious damage control on our toy room. My sweet little boogies would say, "momma, I don't play with this, can we give it to a little kid who doesn't have any toys?" AMEN, YES WE CAN! Loving and serving Jesus!
Heavenly Father,
I pray that you will forgive me for harboring these possessions in my home and in my heart. I pray that things I have selfishly purchased or held on to can be a blessing to someone else, can be a blessing to you. I only want You to control my heart.
Amen.
