Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Goodwill Boxes and Other Things That Weigh Me Down

Dude, its been so long since I've blogged. I've been doing so much living, and not much reflecting. I can only go so long without dissecting life into its theoretical and practical parts. So today, I've been knee deep in a pool of boxes, belongings, and stuff that I am attempting to organize. As much as I love to organize, its a bit overwhelming to cast my gaze upon such an incongruous state of disorder. Where do ya start? And once you start, where do you really know where to end?

So I began organizing according to my stuff''s destination: Goodwill, regifting (hopefully none of my friends will get their own stuff back ;), and back to the pile. As I get ready for the carpet guys to measure one of my rooms, I ask myself, how did I come to keep all of this stuff? There were things I looked through that I had had all my life; others an expression of someone who bought something during her first year in the real world. And I think that's the problem with stuff--it accumulates little by little, and before you know it, you don't know where to start in organizing it all.

It's funny, as I look at these things, I think of a Caedmon's call song that mentions looking through Goodwill bags of things that you received long ago, and realizing that the same things that plagued you a when you first got those things still plague you now.
I was recently reading an old high school newspaper article in which I wrote about trusting God for the future. I was 17 then, about to graduate and go to Liberty. And even though I've graduated and have become somewhat established, I'm still facing those same questions. Am I doing everything I am called to do? Am I moving in the direction God had for all along?
Then I stop and realize that I'm using the wrong verb-do.

Lately I've been learning that so much of what we learn is not so much by doing, but by being. Being in God's presence, being in an attitude of worship, being in a state of surrender, and even being in an attitude of not having that "5 year plan." I've been challenged lately by a friend to stop planning. It's a disease I think. I'm such a planner by heart, and I've gotten worse and set in my ways the older I'm getting. And yet I'm learning right now that the only thing I need to plan is for the surprises God is going bring my way, because His way is certainly better than mine.

So as I try to sort out the boxes in my study, I'm going to stop trying to sort the plans in my life....and let the Master finally have a try at it. M2