A Journey Through Stuff

That one word—stuff—has shown up in my conversations with a wide variety of folks more in the last few months than it has in many years!  For the most part it held a negative and burdensome connotation, not something we wanted more of, but something we wanted to be free from.

As you might know from past posts, Rita and I have been struggling to downsize as we prepare to put our home on the market and move into a continuing care community. When we received notice from Willow Valley Retirement Community that our apartment would be ready by the middle of September, we really got even more serious about the downscaling process.

We were finding stuff we did not know how or why we bought or acquired it!  At several points in the process, I felt I just couldn’t do this! Rita and I agreed it was one of the most stressful times in our 52 years of marriage.

One thing I found most interesting was the variety of responses we received from friends and strangers ranging in ages from young adults to seniors in a variety of situations. Here are just a few of their responses:

“God bless you and Rita. I couldn’t imagine sorting through all of our stuff!”

“We are just going to let our kids deal with it; that will be the price they will pay for inheriting our house!”

“One of our friends just had an agency come in to go through everything. Some went to their resell store, some to several not-for-profit agencies, recycling, and, of course, the garbage!  That’s what we are going to do if I can talk my husband into it.”

“On several occasions I have offered to my parents to help them begin to sort through their stuff but each time they blame the other for not wanting to do it. I expect neither wants to tackle it but chooses to blame it on the other!”

(From an adult son) “If they leave us with that mess, I will just rent the largest dumpster available and all that s**t will go into it!” 

The common denominator of all the responses was the high degree of emotional energy behind them! I’m confident we are not alone in our struggle with stuff; it’s an issue that touches nearly everyone in some way or another. Engaging with the process in an intentional way has raised some interesting insights for us. Different items brought up different things to process.

For instance, I won’t need my chainsaw, weed wacker, lawnmower, or most of my tools. This raised mixed emotions as I realize that much of that work I actually enjoyed! Letting these go was a chance to reminisce about taking care of our beloved homestead over the years.

I counted 14 hunting guns, including my father’s 16 gauge Winchester pump, an absolute classic, at least in my eyes. Our adult children want very little; however, our one son did agree to take his grandfather’s Winchester. Selling the other 13 was fairly easy once I knew Pop’s classic would stay in the family! 

Not every decision has been emotionally loaded. Some are easy, like how many wine glasses do we actually need since we seldom drink wine? Certainly not eighteen!  Now which six to keep?

Several times when we couldn’t understand why we bought a specific item, Rita would look at me with a knowing grin and say, “It must have been a bargain you just couldn’t pass up!”  

To better understand my patterned behavior, I reflected back to growing up in a family in a small coal mining town. My father was a hard-working coal miner who always managed to find mine-related employment but even so, since miners were not paid well, we lived in rent up until my grandmother agreed to give my father the homestead if he agreed to care for her following a need to amputate her leg due to complications from diabetes.  

That said, my parents were always seeking bargains at every occasion in an attempt to stretch what little cash we had as far as we could! There was great pride when mom managed to purchase an inexpensive cut of meat from the butcher, which looked to me like a strange-shaped bone, which she used to create three very tasty meals from!  

I remember dad doing some “horse trading” with a part-time “body man” who was a self trained mechanic and worked out of a single-car garage in his backyard. As I remember it, the final outcome of a somewhat lengthy back and forth was a ton of “stove coal” for repairing the back bumper and trunk lid on our Pacemaker Hudson. There were still some visible wrinkles in the backside of the Hudson but the trunk lid closed quite well! Pop and I picked several large buckets of coal from what spilled where they loaded the trucks at the breaker, effectively getting the car work for free. What a deal!!

It was these kind of treasured experiences etched on my hard drive that going through some of our stuff evoked.

Realizing where my habit of bargain hunting and negotiating come from, I don’t feel bad about them but rather embrace them as fun and useful skills! (It also gives some of my closest friends and family something to heckle me about, not that they actually need any additional ammunition!)

The learning for me is to ask myself first before I really give into my weakness for a good deal is, do we really “need” and will we actually use this item?  I’m committed to moving forward with this strategy!

(If this isn’t an issue for you hopefully you can at least be more sensitive to and heckle those of us who are less!!)

Diplomas and other markers of some of my life accomplishments were a huge struggle for me. This stuff I quickly realized symbolized major factors which enabled me to construct my sense of self!

My high school diploma did nothing because I did nothing! But I will keep my diploma from Williamson College of The Trades since it became, in several ways, a major game changer for me. From my letter of acceptance (which I was sure was a mistake!) to being selected for the Isiah Williamson award (based on a class-wide essay competition) at graduation, my experience at Williamson gave me the belief that I could possibly succeed!  

I will also keep my diploma from York College of Pennsylvania which became a setting which helped me identify and embrace a potential career and where I could even explore leadership potential, none of which were even on my screen when I left Lavelle! Meanwhile, my diploma from Lehigh University, while perhaps more “prestigious,” only filled a requirement to obtain my certification and license as a counselor but really didn’t change anything at the core of my being. The second and third degrees totally altered my life journey in ways I’m still learning to fully appreciate. Looking back, I seemed to see how this Sneaky God seemed to open doors I never even dreamed were possible!  

Another really interesting category of stuff was memorabilia from my three tours with Circus Kirk, a professional traveling youth circus funded by the Lutheran Church of America. Those years allowed me to totally step out of any traditional structure or other folks’ expectations, “let my hair down”(I actually had a fro back then!), and explore some skills, roles, and even a variety of relationships which deeply impacted my person.

While sorting through a closet of hanging clothes I came across my Hobo clown outfit! My degree from Williamson in Power Generation impressed Doc Boas and landed me the position  he later referred to as “clown in charge of the electrical department”! I only agreed to help set up the electrical system if I could also be a clown, a secret desire I had as a child but knew it would never happen. I loved it! Doc asked me to be Producing Clown for my second and third tours. 

As I sat and looked at that old outfit I realized the joy of bringing laughter into the lives of others is now woven into the fiber of my being and I don’t need a clown outfit to live that out. The clown outfit goes but I claim the gift it has allowed me to experience!

The second piece of “Circus Stuff” taking up space for over 50 years was my fire-eating torches. Yes, one more unusual aspect of my history that some of you weren’t aware of! Running across my fire-eating equipment in the crowded attic required yet another time of reflection as I opened the large access door for some cool air and parked myself on an antique chair (that I couldn’t pass up at a yard sale years ago!).  

Early on I was fortunate to develop a close friendship with Tom Speidel from Wenatchee Washington, where he had been involved in the town’s youth circus for several years. He had mastered several circus skills including juggling, wire walking, and fire eating.  He agreed to teach me wire walking which I worked at for several days before accepting I wasn’t going to be a wire walker!

The next skill he offered to teach me was the art of fire-eating. This wasn’t a long-held desire I had secretly harbored for years!!  He stared off by saying, “This can obviously be very dangerous, even possibly deadly if for any reason you inhaled while the torch is in or near your mouth!” I had certainly done some dangerous things before for no good reason but nothing this dangerous in order to learn a new skill that I wasn’t even sure what I was going to do with!

I cautiously agreed and eventually learned the art of fire manipulation. That decision way back then has set in place a clear pattern of a constant desire to accept risk in a variety of ways in order to learn new skills, perspectives, and more recently why others may see important issues differently, even if the payoff isn’t immediately obvious. I will continue to celebrate that learning but not place the torches in the “must keep” pile!

“Coincidentally,” two days later I received a message from a member of Trinity Lutheran in Robesonia where Rita and I had attended over 40 years ago. She saw my name somewhere on Facebook or Messenger and sent this message, “You may not remember my husband or me from Trinity but I will always remember the fire-breathing sermon you did at Trinity during a Sunday service!”  Must have been that Sneaky God again.

Realizing how some of this stuff clearly represents important times of learning and transition has allowed me to more deeply appreciate and lay claim to the qualities that are now available as I move into the next stage of our life journey.

I’m not sure all of this has made the downsizing much easier, but it sure has made it more meaningful!

QUESTIONS FOR DEEPENING THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

1. What do the physical possessions that surround you say about your life journey so far?
2. What have your most significant learnings been that you want to hang on to?
3. What patterns of behavior are products of your past? Do you keep them because they serve you or because they are habit?
4. What major turning points have there been in your life? What “open doors” have you encountered and what did it take for you to be able to walk through them and “grab hold” of those opportunities?
5. Looking back on your life journey, do you see God’s sneaky hand in opening doors for you? How do your beliefs about God affect how you answer this question?
6. Have there been any doors in your life that you didn’t walk through for one reason or another? Why do you think that was? Did a later opportunity come up again that you were ready to take advantage of?
7. What “small” steps—like learning fire eating—you have taken toward growth and self-expansion that gave you the competence or confidence that led to larger things down the road? What small steps could you make now to expand yourself even if you don’t see any practical payoff to it?