Things we leave behind.

I started to say, ‘as you prepare to leave on mission’ and the Spirit checked me by saying, ‘as God prepares you to leave on mission’, and this is so true. More true in fact than I’m comfortable testifying. There are multiple stages in the preparation process that cuts progressively closer and closer to your heart.The stage we are in right now is releasing our ‘stuff’. 

It is embarrassing how much ‘stuff’ you can accumulate in 32 years of marriage! We really thought we had downsized 5 years ago when we sold the big ‘American Dream’ house and moved into this apartment. After spending several weeks agonizing over what to store and what to sell, you really learn about emotional attachment to material things. The last 3 days we’ve had a ‘moving sale,’ trying more to get rid of stuff than to make money. Some of the urgency in getting rid of it is we haven’t really released it, so if it’s gone you can’t move it back into the house. And really, once the rest of the stuff is in a box, you kinda forget about it too.

The day may come when we look into these boxes and say, ‘what in the world did we save that for!’ But the day may also come when we say, ‘man, I’m glad we saved that!’ All we know for sure right now is there are days coming when we will leave it all behind. Whether it’s sold or stored , it will be useless to us then. The day we step on the plane to Haiti is one of these days, and the day the Father plucks us from this life is the other. What we are discovering is, there is joy in ‘Things we Leave Behind.’  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQY2auav8Qw