As we prepared to sell and move out of our house in the country in October of 2014, I packed boxes furiously, getting rid of tons of stuff and sorting through years of accumulation. I had an office in that house that Karl had lined with bookshelves, floor to ceiling, and I had literally tons of books. Since we were shipping all our belongings by truck and then ship and then truck to the St. Croix house, I had to be brutal and get rid of the lion’s share of those books. It hurt.
Fast forward to now. Most of the boxes of books and curios that I packed over two years ago remained in boxes. We had some remodeling to do before there was a room and shelves to hold them. We’ve been here a bit over three months, and the first project is done. We have a wonderful office that can double as a second guest room upstairs now. It has an expanded walk-in closet to hold all my craft supplies, and as of Saturday, it has completed and beautiful bookshelves. I spent a terrific day, all day, on Saturday, unpacking the last of the boxes in this house, and unearthing my most prized and most favorite books, my collection of turtle figurines (can you say goofy old lady here?) and other trinkets that mean so much. They are now happily living, out in the open and easily accessible.
It’s all just stuff. I get that. I know that I can live a fulfilled and happy life without them (I’ve done it for over two years!). But. I sit at my computer this morning surrounded by volumes with names like Ender’s Game, Moons of Mitra, To Dance with Kings. I am in the company of characters created by Clive Cussler, Janet Evanovich, Dick Francis. I am in close contact with the beauty of words written by Shakespeare and Chaucer and John Milton and Kalil Gibran, and I have easy access to the wisdom of Max Lucado and Miss Piggy (Her Guide to Life is very astute!). In addition, I can see the troll turtle I got for Christmas when I was probably 11, a crystal turtle that first grader Jessie gave me, a small lighthouse Karl and I bought on a trip to bar Harbor, Maine. To anyone else these things are just stuff, and I anticipate a time after I’m gone when my minimalist daughter shakes her head ruefully as she tosses most of it out. That is and will be ok. But for me, these small things and these volumes are a testament of who I am and how I got here.
I know that this world is not my permanent home. I know that what we see here is a mere, dark image of the wonder that is to come. I praise God for that. I also praise Him for the big and the small gifts he gives us now, to give us hope and to sustain us as we move through this world on our way to eternity.
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