OBB

A week or so ago I entered into one of the most laborious efforts in my clean-up process: sifting through the papers. I threw out a lot of magazine articles: recipes I never tried, exercises I never adopted, top-ten-ways-to-do-whatever-the-heck-I-thought-needed-to-be-done-at-the-time… I threw out English lit papers from high school, and drafts of theory papers from college (I kept the actual graded papers, in order to remind myself that I once knew which theorists belonged with which theory and how to convince my professors that I knew what the theorist was talking about). Theories crack me up anyway. I think philosophers and sociologists (and members of any other -ologys and -osophys) must be really fast writers. They somehow capture the randomness of those moments where suddenly your thoughts reach clarity, they get it down on paper and occasionally even add accompanying graphs, and they must be able to give themselves enough of a road map to return to that clarity from time-to-time. I have some of those moments of clarity, and a few of them have been captured in these papers I hoard. But for the most part, I don’t write fast enough. It’s like when you’re dreaming, and the dream is so real and you are actively involved in everything that’s going on, but the moment you wake up you can’t remember anything that was happening seconds before.

But, as usual, I digress from my point of writing. I ran across an article that was worn with age. It should have easily gone in the trash with multitudes of other “dream life” articles, but I just couldn’t bear to part with it. I’ve had the article since high school or early college (If I were at home, I would check, but why delay writing just to clarify minor details?). So the chick in this article lived off of $6,000 a year – and she had a cozy little apartment and funky clothes and a smile on her face and all that jazz. Apparently she exchanged rent for yard work to her landlord, ate free meals at the restaurant she worked for, didn’t have a car, etc. etc. I’m pretty sure she probably started out debt-free (big help), enjoyed the cheaper things in life (which I do, although I really like the pampering stuff too…), and surrounded herself with other poor people (which I have, though in my current state of employment, I fear I am a bad influence). I have held onto this article about a real bohemian, who enjoyed life to the fullest by living simple and stress free, because it is where I strive to be. Backwards, ain’t it? I spent lots of money on college (and continue to every month), so I could live in a manner that would have been easier to achieve had I never gone to college in the first place. But then again, the –ologys and –osophys I studied have produced the bohemian mind in me, if not the bohemian lifestyle. And I think I’m doing my best with what I’ve got. I moved back home to pay less rent. I live in a city where the not-having-a-car-thing is not really an option. And I am vowing to downsize my so-called career to a manageable pace.

I picked up the book Citizen Girl Sunday evening. Hi-lar-i-ous. Not so much because it is genuinely funny, but more so because it is genuinely my life. I’m not crazy ~ other people really do feel my pain. So I continue to reexamine my priorities, consider cutbacks (rentals vs. first releases, folgers vs. gingerbread lattes, launch.com vs. new CDs… ok, maybe scratch the last one?), and brace myself for the mighty wind that’s blowin’. I continue to organize my chaos (without and within), set my gaze on finishing that freakin’ Masters paper, and come up with ways to work out a budget without working myself to death. I’ll get by with a little help from my friends ~ my stress is really quite menial compared to many. For now, I’ll go refill on the free beverages supplied by company, with my choice of four different sweeteners. I’ll defiantly take a lunch break and go read a book. I’ll take a deep breath, and I’ll press on.

corners of my mind

In the current phase of my self-organization, I am sorting through boxes of pictures and shredding duplicates and unsentimental photos. One of these days I may even break out my scrapbooking supplies, but for now I’m simply downsizing. I’ve spent considerable time with my mission trip photos, particularly those from Guatemala. While I only spent one week there, it is an experience I will not soon forget. It’s been around 2 years since I was there, but I’ve had friends go back for longer stays. Being there gave my soul a completely new experience.

While at the Casa, your priorities are completely different. There were no concerns about beating traffic, catching up on paperwork, my looming Masters paper, that new skirt at the Gap, or tomorrow night’s Gilmore Girls. My daily duties were quite simple, and yet extremely significant. Waking up with the sunrise, I would walk over to the baby dorm and help with 25 bed babies. Entering the room was in itself an experience, with many of the babies already standing in their cribs and crying, while others will still clinging to the last precious moments of sleep. We would lift them out of their cribs, give them morning hugs, change diapers, bathe those who messed themselves, change clothes, and entertain them until breakfast. Feeding multiple babies simultaneously was quite entertaining in itself ~ Molly, Sarah, and I have some great pictures of this If I knew how to download them (I’m not in the digital age).

The rest of my day was pretty much spent loving children. I played soccer with a deaf child who seemed to forgive my lack of athletic ability in favor of my knowledge of his language. I was able to gain the friendship of some of the pre-teen girls by drawing pictures of them on a notepad (and I am a terrible artist). I rocked children, sang songs, gave lots of hugs and pushed a lot of swings. I learned that even six-year-old Guatemalan girls understand sarcasm and use it quite skillfully. I also learned to always ask the teenagers how much driving experience they have before letting them get behind the wheel.

Evenings were consumed with cooking meals (Molly and I learned we could experiment well with the ingredients at hand), spending time in worship, and just plugging into each other’s experiences. Even side trips to Antigua and Guatemala City had a surreal feel to them.

I know that life cannot be this removed from reality, and that for those living in that day-to-day reality life is not always so serene. But its nice to experience it, and to be able to look back upon it, and to remember that life doesn’t have to be so complicated.

the devil's playground

They say debt is a bottomless pit where the devil likes to play.
I'd sell my soul to get out of this hole, but there'd be hell to pay.
~ Ken Spooner (God love Nashville songwriters…)

If any of you OBUers ever had Dr. Mills for a class, you know that he likes to talk about life as much as he likes to talk about sociology. Of course, I suppose life is the substance of sociology, though his advice was dished out more as fatherly wisdom than theoretical application. Having worked for the man for three years, I received much advice both in and out of classes. The best piece of advice I never followed from him was some that he gave all of his students in every class that he taught: take Personal Finance. Dr. Mills managed to fit that nugget of advice somewhere into every course he taught. I’ve been taught that if something is repeated in the Bible, it’s probably something that you’re supposed to pay attention to (and something that may take several repetitions to sink into our feeble brains). Dr. Mills’s advice was repeated to me over and over again: take Personal Finance. Of course, like any bullheaded child, I knew that I didn’t need to take Personal Finance. After all, I had taken both Macro- and Micro- Economics, and how many business classes can a Sociology/Philosophy major really stomach? And obviously I knew what I was doing. Sure, so I was paying for my books using a credit card. Sure, I was taking out student loans instead of working a part-time job. But I was getting a degree; I’d have that stuff paid off in no time. Of course, my first job didn’t pay so much, but I was doing what I loved. And, even though my employer was part of the UofA system and paying 80% of my tuition, I went ahead and took out some small loans for grad school to pad my income. No biggie – that M.A. will surely lead to a livable wage. So, six years out of college (has it really been that long? that’s scary!) I have managed to buy lots of stuff (only to end up selling it for pennies), run through several crappy cars, and get stuck in a job that sucks the lifeblood straight out of my veins. I am staring down my debt and finally winning. I am learning to live below my means. And I am taking a hard look at what it is I really want to be doing and I how I can get there. Heck, I may even get around to focusing my mind enough to finish that looming paper and officially earn my M.A. In the meantime, I wonder what would have happened had I just enrolled in Personal Finance?

~ clean sweep ~

God is doing a work in me. He’s walking through my rooms and halls, checking every corner, tearing down the unsafe walls and letting in the light. I am working hard to clean my house and set it straight, to not let pride get in the way, to catch an eternal vision of what I am to become. It seems easier living out my life in Christ for those do not know me; to hide the thorn stuck in my side and all my secret faults. But you know me well and it’s you I want the most to see and recognize the changes. A word from you empowers me to press on for my goal. Will you help me be new? Will you hold me to the promises that I have made? Will you let me be new? Forgive my old self, and my old mistakes. When I feel condemned to live my old life, remind me I’ve been given a new life in Christ ~ Sara Groves

I recently spent a full week of vacation at home, sorting through stuff. Don’t let the image mislead you. I was not gazing lazily through boxes of mementos (although there were instances of such), nor was I simply throwing out the summer tops I hadn’t worn this year because they were so 1994 (yes, I did some of that too – specifically by parting with my hideous “class of ‘94” t-shirt, featuring a “whoop, there it is” logo on the back – considering I chose not to attend my 10 year reunion, it seemed only right). What I did in that week was much more difficult, much more exhausting, and much more freeing than I imagined it would be.

Having moved back home over a year ago to save some money (Gretchen had decided to follow her dream to New York, I couldn’t think of anyone I would really like to live with, and I knew that moving out on my own again would only dig me deeper into debt), I had a corner of my parent’s storage building piled floor to ceiling. Mind you, when we moved out of the Hillcrest house, I sold some of my furniture and mounds of easier to part with items. I also placed a good number of items in a garage sale this spring to support a missions teams. What I was now attempting to tackle were those items I had deemed vital – the ones I had placed neatly into plastic totes so that I would have them when I moved out. My plan when I moved in with my parents was to save up so that I could buy a house, decorate it, and fill it with even more stuff. My former future was closed up in those boxes, sticky from spider webs and stale from the passing of time. Additionally, I was filtering through the boxes of papers that had both built up in my room and been placed in storage to go through later. This was later.

I spent a week hauling boxes out of storage, picking out the few and rare items that I still felt a desire to hang on to and placing the rest back into the boxes to be disposed of. I got rid of all of my furniture (that wasn’t with me in the house) except for a coat rack and two vintage lamps. I boxed up most of my kitchen, all of my bathroom, half of my bookshelves, and the majority of my trinkets. I threw away birthday cards I never looked at, notes from friends who had weighed me down, old term papers that reminded me of how much I have forgotten. I threw out journals full of three point sermons and spoon-fed theology. And I filled large bags with shirts from events long past. I cleaned house. I think the most entertaining part of my week was loading all of these items into my brother-in-law’s truck, driving them over to dogtown for a yard sale at my sister’s house, unloading and loading again. I really liked driving that truck. I need to get one of those. After the yard sale, with a measly 100 bucks in my hand, we placed all that was left on the curb. It was soon picked up by a family that drove by, to give to a single mom and her daughters.

Since then I’ve been steadily trying to get rid of more. It’s amazing how much spiritual and mental space you can clear, simply by clearing out physical items. I am learning to recognize my needs as the wants they are, and realizing that God is already meeting my truest needs through community. I don’t know where I’m headed past this point, but I know that I am working to move forward without the burden of debt and without the burden of stuff. I am no longer attempting to fill up my life with artifacts that tell others about me, but rather learning to let my life speak for itself.