Garage Sale for God's Glory

Two years have passed since the last garage sale endeavor of my mother's and I. Not quite enough time to forget the pain, annoyance, and work involved in having a sale but the stuffeth over floweth, so a sale will be had. My brother moved to New York City last week and left everything he didn't want or need (e.g., dishes, pans, etc.) with my parents to deal with, including a vehicle and a townhouse - anyone need a 4Runner and a garage in Beaverton to park it in? I keep a container in the garage that is my designated donation box. The past year I've been saving it up for a garage sale. When Janelle was up visiting over Memorial Day, she helped me purge the stuff in my garage. The box is now heaped and other boxes have been pressed into service. Unfortunately I am on my own to purge the rest of the house. It won't be very thorough, it's not as if I am moving to NYC into a teeny shared apartment, so why bother? Why, indeed. Because of God's glory.

Having a garage sale for God's glory may seem rather strange. If our purpose as Christians is to bring God glory, it requires us to be refined and purified from those things that detract us from this goal. We need to remove whatever idols and little gods we have in our lives which dilute our passion and effectiveness. Like a professional athlete who trains with diligence, perseverance and determination to receive glory in their sport; likewise, Christians should be training too for God's glory. We are in a battle, we need to be fit warriors.

Still wondering how a garage sale fits into the picture? I live in America, a culture known for it's consumerism. We are consumed with having stuff. This does not bring God glory and traps our heart. Stuff in itself is not bad. A couch is a comfortable spot to sit and write my random thoughts on this blog. Some stuff is necessary, even nomadic tribes and ascetic monks have some stuff. But what happens when a single person has too much stuff? They get comfortable, sated, complacent, immovable. Being comfortable and content isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when that is valued more or keeps a person from following God's leading it isn't a healthy place to be. I recognize that I am getting closer to that line than I would like; my comfortableness is making me uncomfortable.

As I talked with a friend last night, sharing a budding idea about moving, she asked in dismay, "You have such a great home. You would give up all of this?" I realize it is a very un-American attitude to think of selling my home, most of my possessions, pick up roots. Yet I don't want to be so comfortable that when God says, "Go!" that I stammer with excuses of being comfortable, settled, and unable to obey. My answer to the question from my friend, "You would giver up all of this?" was - "Absolutely." A conviction doesn't mean it will be done easily. I have many fine things that I inherited from my paternal grandmother, items I have never once used - they don't fit my lifestyle, but they are my connection to grandparents I hardly knew, a substitute for the relationship that wasn't there. I also have items from my maternal grandmother, not quite as fine but greater treasures because of the dear relationship with my grandparents. Passing these things along will not be easy, heart-wrenching actually as I have made them a substitute for the person they represent. Since I am not moving imminently, those items will be held on to for a little longer. I want to use the gold filigree Wedgewood demitasse cups at least once before I sell them.

Many other things have no connection to relatives that are just taking up space and weighing me down. Taking inspiration and a cue from my brother, I'm starting a purging process. Making room for something new in my life. Ironically, my new House Beautiful magazine arrived this weekend and the theme is 'small living' and each article talks about paring down to the essentials, small spaces needing to be uncluttered. How nice of God to send me another source of inspiration and instructions. I better wrap this up, I've got work to do!

Fixing in the New Year

Today, I decided to put my kitchen back together after a two week frenzy of baking and cooking (aka - Christmas). It started out with turning on the self-cleaning cycle on the oven. I question the sanity of such a decision and the rightness of having such an option; for I am sure that heating up the oven to the equivalent of a warm night in Hades is not a safe procedure, despite the auto-lock on the oven door. The stench that it produced made my eyes water and my throat burn. I opened the windows, lifted the glass panel in the screen door, and turned on fans – all this on a chilly winter night – in a desperate attempt to expel the toxic air that has filled my home. While trying to watch a movie I sat on the floor in front of an open window so that I could get a few whiffs of fresh air. Surprisingly the smoke alarm never went off despite looking in the window at one point and seeing burning embers at the bottom of the oven.

After poisoning myself with the cleaning cycle I moved on to sorting out the under sink cabinet. Two weeks ago while preparing for a girls brunch at my house I managed to stop up the kitchen sink with potato peelings. After a few attempts at fixing it myself with no luck I called in the big man – dad. In a desperate phone call I asked if he could bring over the snake and fix the drain, pronto! Before the girls came over, if at all possible, please. He obliged, but wasn't sure whether or not that he had put the pipes all back together tight enough not to leak. So we moved my tower of storage baggies and kitchen papers to the garage and left the bucket under the sink instead. Tired of going to the garage to fetch a baggie, it was time to move them back under the sink since the bucket was still dry two weeks later. Everything had just been put back in place, I was closing the cabinet doors when the left door started to hang at an awkward angle and there was a distinctive clink and tink; that of a screw falling from its intended place and bouncing around. After five years in this home and struggling with this particular cabinet door, I was forced to finally deal with the problem. Kneeling down, I removed everything that I had just so nicely put back, laid down partially inside the cabinet, with a flashlight gripped between my teeth to figure out what needs to happen. A few attempts later, a self-education on hinges, and my cabinet door is working just fine now, better than it has in five years!

Next up was cleaning the inside of the microwave. My bean and rice taco thingy exploded and made a mess... almost two weeks ago. As I scrubbed to get off the baked on bits of pinto beans that are almost melted into the walls, I think this job would have been much easier if I had cleaned it when it happened, instead of letting it sit in there while I continued to use the microwave for the past couple weeks. It is all the fault of one bean, which exploded and shot rice everywhere. At the time I was thankful that I had let the plate sit in the oven after the timer went off so that the mess was contained. But now I'm thinking that if it had been on the counter, I would have been forced to clean up the mess at the moment and not now.

I start to philosophize in my head about why it isn't until something is broken and demands our attention, or when we finally get fed-up with something, that we get around to dealing with the issue, instead of addressing it when you notice the symptoms. But that is too heady for tonight. All my procrastinating by getting the kitchen back in order has only delayed the inevitable task that must be accomplished tonight – de-ornamenting the tree and un-weaving the lights so that it can be recycled tomorrow morning. Removing the Christmas décor is one of the saddest tasks for the entire year. The tree is the first thing to go. I would put it off for another week if it wasn't already prime tinder and if I didn't have a very healthy fear of Christmas trees spontaneously combusting.

Onward...

Changes in the wind

I was walking back from the mailbox flipping through the few pieces of mail that had accumulated over the past few days since I last checked my box and thought, "I need to get a duplicate key made for Kate." And then it hit me. Like a wave overtaking me and knocking me over. My life is about to radically change - and I panicked. Kate isn't just coming to stay for a visit she is moving in, indefinitely. My home will no longer be just mine. My routines will have to accommodate someone else. My way of doing things may have to bend and become flexible. My life is going to be shared - no more hiding away in my home. Is this all a bad thing? No! I had to ask my self do I want to back out or change my mind about Kate moving in? No! Am I going to have to be less selfish and less self-focused? Yes! And that is a very good thing. Life is going to be very different this fall, but I'm looking forward to it. Just remind me of that the next time I panic. :)