simplify

I’ve been thinking a lot about simplifying my life. 

Like most people, I have too much stuff.  Too much stuff literally and too much stuff on my mind.

Too many things. I hate clutter. I am NOT a pack rat. I also don’t get sentimentally attached to things very easily. So this means that I am quick to get rid of things that we no longer use. Despite this, I still find I have too many things. And frankly, not only do I not need it all. I don’t even really want  it. I think the more I have the less satisfied I am. It makes me more focused on things. And I do not want to be that kind of a person. That is not what I was created for.

And too many things on my mind. This has always and forever will be a problem for me. The severity of this comes and goes, but I am always thinking of about 42 things at once and usually anywhere from 1 to 100 steps ahead of where I’m at now. And I am such a planner that my natural state is always focused on the future. Either what’s for dinner tonight, what do I have to get done at work tomorrow, and the longer term…what I want for my life in 1 year, 5 years, 10 years…always planning. But never just being. It makes it very hard to enjoy the present. There was a quote from the series finale of The Office that I liked, “I wish there was some way to know you were in the good ol’ days before you left them”. Someday, I’m going to look back on this time in my life, and feel nostalgic and wish I had just been able to enjoy it more.

At church this past weekend, the our pastor read the famous passage out of Ecclesiastes that has really struck a chord for me over this past year, and continues to kind of reemerge in my life periodically:

“There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.”

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

This to me is a gentle reminder that there is a time for everything, and right now, at this time in my life, this is what God has for me. I need to be satisfied with that. 

So back to my point of simplifying.  Moving to Iowa was a really good way to do that. We downsized from a decently sized house into a small apartment, which meant getting rid of stuff and really thinking about what stuff we need and what we don’t.  It also was a good way to go from having lots of activities to well, no activities (now that we’ve gotten pretty established here and made good friends, we do have more going on, but it’s not overwhelming). And I really do feel so blessed with where I am. I really am at peace with it. I am enjoying my friends and my husband and my family (and my dog!). I am. I am starting to think this move is like a reset button on my life in a lot of ways. So while this move forced me to simplify in a lot of ways, unless I really work on my heart and tendencies and character, “stuff” slowly creeps back in.

I’ve been mulling over ways to make this a reality for me, but this post seems to have gotten long and rambling enough for one day, so I’ll share more a different day.