I am a failure at downsizing. Call me sentimental, but I love my stuff. My stuff is not expensive, but it sure is priceless to me. Pictures and cards, presents and books from some of the most precious people in my life. Give them away? I’ve taken pictures of most all of it and kept just a few. Box upon box of video Books and Bible studies. God used these things to help grow me at a time when I hungered to learn every single day not just on Sundays and Wednesdays. Can I give them away? I do it all the time. No problem. Bibles and Gospel tracts from my time ministering at the flea market….I wanted to do anything I could for God. My time was His, as well as my resources. They are now mostly gone and ready to leave another’s hand.
Then there are the journals. Journal upon journal upon journal of my prayers and my dreams and my questions. Just as many notebooks alongside them full of sermon notes. Keep them or toss them? Gifts this rare sure cannot be donated. Everyone says, “toss!” You’ll feel better once it is done. But somewhere in all those journals and notebooks is a part of my heart. In them is the story of a girl turned young lady turned woman who ran from God and ran and ran until I had nowhere else to run. It is the story of a woman who came back to God. It is the story of an older woman still serving Him today. It is all documented…how far God brought me, how He saved and healed and delivered and set me free. Documented are the many prayers He answered and the visions from Him that came to pass. The miracles!!! And what about those sermon notes? Toss, they say it is all on computer anyway. But they tell a similar story, and those aren’t my Words, but His. Journals and notebooks. I have put them all in a trash bag, but something in me says NO!!! These are my gifts and my inheritance.
So now I will stop and go dig them out – again.
I have had a hard time adjusting to my smaller house. I learned today that much of that has to do with thinking I needed to downsize everything and feeling like if I do it “correctly” (in ways advised by others), there wouldn’t be much of me left at all in this house I NEED despereately to make into a home.
My writing may not always be grammatically correct, and it may not be everybody’s or anybody’s cup of tea. I good with that. And yes some of it or most of it may be loaded on a computer somewhere, but throw those things out??? No I can’t let go of those handwritten pages. They are a part of me. So, I once again have them out of the trash, and I am putting them safely away in my mother’s old trunk. This will be their new home.
I imagine most writers will understand if I live my life out among journals I won’t dwell in very often and journals that will likely visit a dumpster in a few decades. By then I won’t need the inheritance, the testimony, the reminders, or even a heart since when I leave this world I will have His.
…and just like that, with this decision not to downsize my heart, It is suddenly feeling so much more like my home!!!
If anyone knows Melissa... 