But, it's not the normal ones that people list. Not meat. I just ate a fat cheeseburger. Not soda. I just had a large Dr. Pepper. Not coffee. I think I had four or five cups today. Not chocolate. I had a cookie earlier.
Instead, I'm giving up "stuff"...
Haha! Not vague at all, right?
Seriously, just stuff...material possessions...things...objects...belongings.
My plan is this: Over the Lent time period, I am working my way through our house, room by room, to clean and purge everything. I keep wanting a minimal life. A home that is not cluttered or busy or full of things gathering dust. I want a house where I live comfortably, where I can play with my kids, a home where I can spend a small amount of time cleaning and have more time to focus on the important things.
We are not hoarders by any means. But, we are packrats. Well, I am a packrat. I have this desire to keep all of Isa's drawings and colorings (which average 100 pages per day), every little thing that reminds me of specific occassions or days, every gift, every purchase, every item. I am the queen of saying, "But what if we need it...?" and "But it reminds me of..." or "But it was so expensive...." and then it gets shoved back into a box where it sits until we go through the box again in a year and then, the excuses to keep it return. I'm done with that.
I do not need the nebulizer that we bought five years ago when Isa was two months old and had RSV for a month. It has moved through two apartments and now sits in our basement and has been boxed for the last five years. She has no breathing problems now and even if she did, we have amazing insurance that would pay for a new one, so why keep it? I don't know. But I just never have been able to get rid of it.
We have a PSP that is broken. It has been broken for over six months. Jose has messed with it maybe twice since it broke, trying to fix it, but it's hopeless. And so, it has sat on the shelf, moved from shelf to shelf for the last few months, broken, unplayable, and yet, we don't get rid of it.
Two Christmases ago, Jose bought me a used Sega Genesis. Seriously, it was one of the sweetest gifts ever because he put a lot of thought into it and the one game we have for it, a game that holds a lot of great memories for me. He searched everywhere for the game to buy it for me for my gift. And then, when we went to play it, we couldn't get the player onscreen to move left. We bought new controllers, but yet no left movement. There is something wrong with the game console that keeps it from recognizing the left button, and yet, the system has stayed in the basement for over two years. And, it even moved with the television when we rearranged the basement. Why do we still have it? No clue.
Now, that was just three items. We have a house with a full size basement, two stories, three bedrooms, and probably a dozen closets. Just imagine what else we have hiding away....
So, for Lent, I am taking the dive (literally) into the attachment we have to our "stuff". It will strengthen my relationship with God because it will remind me that He is all I need. Will we keep stuff? Yea. But will we be as dependent on them? No. I want to take the time cleaning to focus on where my priorities lie.
Overall, my Lent "resolution" is to minimize distractions from what's most important. The deep cleaning and purging is the most relevant part of that, the part which most focus will be. However, there are other smaller changes that will be made, and I'm sure I will write about them soon.
What are you giving up?
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