“YOU HAVE WAY TO MANY CLOTHES CHILD!!! I WILL NEVER BUY YOU ANOTHER PIECE OF CLOTHES AS LONG AS YOUR UNDER THIS ROOF!!!”
Poor, innocent kid. She never saw it coming. EVER.
There was not one specific moment in time that wacked us over our head and caused our hearts to start changing radically, instead it was a slow fade to selflessness…or we thought.
Then I walked thru my 2500 square foot home that has five bedrooms and three bathrooms and every stinkin’ square inch is full. We just moved people. We purged when we moved from our 2400 square foot home. How in the world did this house become full?
MORE, MORE, MORE!!
ME, ME, ME!
A few years back after wanting to wring our own necks from being in debt up to our eye balls, we met a little man we like to call Dave Ramsey. WHOA. He rocked our world, and we thanked Jesus this man taught us the crazy notion of not spending money you don’t have.
So we stopped the hemmoraging, and started busting our tail ends to get out debt. Some months were plain ugly. I threw big girl fits that could rival my three year olds on his worst day. Still, I was grateful to God that each month our “what-the-heck-did-we-buy-six-years-ago-that-we-don’t-even-remeber-but-we-are-hemmraging-money-for-it-anways” became fewer and fewer.
With our new life style there was no need for a mall, we have the most fatabulous thrift store that sells $100 bandalino jeans for $2.99. Why just buy one pair when they are practically giving them away? Why not buy three?
Cute decorative plate for $1.00? Oh.Yes. We need four, one for every season.
The most adorable outfit EVER for my kid for $3.00? SURE! Why not?!
It all adds up. Every.single.dollar. And it adds up to excess junk.
Now I have a full house. Not in the crazy hoarders sense so we should be on TLC, but the house is full of junk and stuff, and the shed is half full.
I judge the super-spenders down the road that I see pull in with bags and bags from high-end stores. While my bags may not be paper bags with classy decorations, I have been bringing bags in as well. Turns out I am a big-fat-hypocrite.
The Lord was changing our lives and we were feeling great about being better stewards with what HE has given us. Never really realizing that while our spending was less, junk we didn’t really need still made it in.
I guess we missed a lesson somewhere along the way. I wonder how many opportunities to bless someone else we missed out on because I was too busy thinking I WAS BEING BLESSED BY A GOOD DEAL at my local thrift store!
Dang it!
A swift kick in the rear will get you every.single.time.
As Thanksgiving approached, my gut hurt. So did Bill’s. Why LORD, why?! We have been doing great….right? We had pre-determined to make Christmas about Him. One gift per kid, one family gift. Christmas would be about HIM. So why this deep nagging feeling as the holiday season approached? Then He started peeling our “doing-better-with-our-finances-and-lives” blinders off and unleashed “2012, The year of need not greed” before our very eyes.
OIY.
Yes, we had done better we had been using our resources that were once tied up in debt for living like Jesus on a daily basis with our children…maybe I will write about those one day just not today. The point is that the Lord made it clear we were still not giving it ALL to Him. We were not giving all of ourselves or our resources. We still worried about savings accounts, adoption fees, and retirement. UGH. He wanted more from us. He wanted us to let go of the last few dollars we clung to for what we thought the money needed to go to and He wanted us to see how blessed we were. How much we had, and how stinking selfish we still were.
I am blessed. So are you.
Thinking in your head: “yeah easy for you to say, you don’t know how much my husband makes!” If your annual income is more than $35,000 a year your in the top 4% for the world. THE WORLD!!
Complaining about your one car that runs, but you still have another? Thinking your closet needs a makeover because you have had these clothes for five years, even though your shelves are vomiting excess? Is your closet under the stairs full of serving pieces you use once a year? YOU ARE BLESSED!!!!! I can almost gauarantee that if you are reading this you are in the top 4%.
Our self-induced pity parties come from our over-indulged, sense of entitlement, gotta-have-what-she-has, bratty way of thinking!
WE ARE BLESSED!
Then the Lord got me again when Jen Hatmaker and her family went on a radical ride she likes to call 7. Each month they focused on a different area: food, clothes, possessions, media, waste, spending, stress. Eat only seven ingredients, get rid of seven types of media and so on.
Possessions. The title itself caused me to break out in a sweat, my hands were clamy, my shirt was wet with fear and I wanted to close my eyes and jump to the next chapter. I knew that was where the Lord would get me. It’s been plaguing me since I unpacked the very last box from our move. To the un-trained eye my house may not be full, but open up a cabinet under the stairs and see the 5 foot long shelves my husband built just for me for my kitchen “overflow.”
It’s not just that one closet, our little family owns THREE sets of dishes. Three. What in the world? We use one, on Thanksgiving and Christmas and if you break one I may kick you. The other one is rarely used.
I could go on but you get the picture of our selfish, greedy lifestyle that we have been living in spite of our best efforts.
UGH.
I read the chapter with one eye open, and one eye Heaven-ward asking the Lord to be easy on me. He wasn’t. He struck me. I have always been a slow learner. Gentleness does not work with me. Be fort-right and harsh and I am all yours. He was. The uneasiness I felt since I un-packed and the pit in my stomach errupted. . I repented and cried, I asked the Lord to forgive me for failing in my own home. Being the sweet gracious God that He is, he lifted my head, wiped my tears with grace and asked me to let Him fill my heart and home not posessions.
So I did what any logical person would do, I tore thru the house, going thru closets and yelling at each owner about how they had to get rid of half their clothes, somehow hoping in my high-pitched shrills they would jump on board and ditch their wardrobes with me realizing all the while that are blessed and earthly possessions don’t matter.
They didn’t.
They stared at me like I was from Mars until I left the room. Then one of them couldn’t stop laughing. Punk.
I have been to a third world country, my heart has been broken as I walked along streets literally covered with trash and people slept under sheets. My son lives in that third world country. My son does not have a closet full of clothes or multiple dish choices to choose from at each meal He doesn’t care either.
What is our family doing to give all of ourselves to the Lord? What is our family giving up because we do not need it and we have an abundance? What are we doing to make sure we are truly not like every other American?
What are we doing to make sure we give Him all of us?
The ache in our stomachs are that from the Lord, breaking us, molding us and bending our hearts to Him and I love it. I love that He is rocking our world in a radical way that only he could. How much closer can we be to the Lord when we stop worrying about what we are missing in our homes, and start worrying about what we are missing in our relationship with Christ?
Scared? You should be! Read it!
Order it here. It’s the best $7.83 you will spend all year! In fact I am giving away a copy. Leave a comment…with wordpress your email address will be shown to me but in your comment tell me one thing your afraid you might get convicted on when reading this book or what you feel like you have too much of. One of my awesome kiddos will draw a name next Monday January 23! Facebook it…blog it…share with your friends. I would hate to see only one person enter!!
Don’t leave a girl hanging, comment!
Many Hearts, One Family 
Yesterday I posted in my own blog about being more authentic in my blogging. I should probably be more authentic in my commenting as well. So I was going to shy away from commenting, because it was too raw, but God has compelled me that to not speak up would be to disobedient to Him. I mean this all in gentle love.
I am not rich. Blessed? Indeed. Today’s post, which I just published, is celebrated the blessed quality of yesterday, blessings that had nothing to do with possessions or money. This week has actually been really great. But when I think of money, I tremble. I’m not rich. I’ve never made close to $35,000, or close to $10,000 in a year. I’ve never owned a car. I’ve never had a steady, full time job. I graduated college and since then I’ve had three part-time, temporary jobs. Added together, ten months employment in forty-three months. This week, my seasonal position– the first job I’ve gotten in nineteen & half months– has ceased. I have debts that I do not add to, and haven’t for years, but I also haven’t made much effort in paying off because my income has been so small. I am not homeless… only because I live with my parents. Without their generosity, I would be. My belly is not empty. I praise the Lord for this. I am definitely blessed. I sleep in a warm house in a cold, wet January and I am grateful.
And I definitely have too many possessions. God’s been telling me to go and clear it out. I am not a paragon. But I am so sick of hearing “all American Christians are rich and selfish and need to figure it out”. I am not saying that those who are shouldn’t be compelled to generosity. And I am not at all ignorant of the poverty overseas and the fact that I think that God has blessed our country in order to pass these blessings on. That is always His Way.
But this issue is so much bigger than this. I am moving to India. Partially this is because I’m marrying a wonderful, amazing Indian man God made me for, and part of it is because God’s calling me to go and do his work. Another part is because the visa process for an international couple is just so much easier there than here… I can’t actually afford for him to come to me.
But a large part of it, and this is me being authentic here I don’t tell everyone this, is there really isn’t anything in America for me anymore. I’m sure this has to do with God encouraging me to go, and seek His path for my life, but I’m not alone.
On the US census, 1 out of 5 in my generation was unemployed. That was two years ago. The situation has not improved.
I have a heart for the poor of the world. But I think we, as Christians, need to wise up to the poor in the church. In Acts, the Christians prayed for a spirit of boldness and instantly they became active in generosity. Their first act of giving was to take care of the needy among them. It never says they started a soup kitchen or wrote letters to soldiers. I’m not dissing those things. But the first thing they took care of, the first priority, was making sure not a single brother or sister didn’t have what they needed.
I think the American church needs to see that 1 Timothy 5:8 “If anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for his immediate family, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever” does not just apply to our spouses, parents, and children, but to our brothers and sisters in Him. Any church that gives generously to strangers of ambiguous spiritual state without first making sure every member’s needs is met is in violation of this verse.
I had that revelation months ago. But I’ve been too afraid to share. I am poor and I thought, “people will just think I’m begging for a handout. But I do think this is Truth from God. I’ll wait until I’m on my feet, and then tell them.” But now I am convicted of how wrong that was.
I’m trembling inside, because I feel I must write this or be disobedient. I’m more timid than this normally; but I also have prayed for boldness. God bless you, and keep you, and give you growth, joy, strength, and peace. Seriously. Nothing but love. Strong words, but nothing but love.
Praying for you Pamela. 🙂
Thanks. 🙂
Thank you for your honesty! Thank you also for everything your family does your generosity and graciousness for everyone around you is leaving your community blessed! I have some purses for you as well and can’t wait to hear about the treasure you give it to!
Anyways, I can’t wait to read it!
So excited to see how many pocketbooks are coming in! These precious women are gonna be tickled pink!
I’d love the chance to win a copy! I’m too scared to buy it!! 😉
HA!
I am like Jenn above, afraid to buy the dang book! I have been thinking about the “stuff” in my house and how I need to purge so much of it. On top of giving the “stuff” to people who would actually put it to good use, rather than it sitting in my house taking up space, just simplifying life sounds awesome!
Purge!! Think of it as a great way to clean your mental space as well as physical space!! Maybe consider taking it to a homeless shelter or a battered womens shelter even instead of just goodwill!
I want in on the drawing! I hear you!!!! I look at my house and wonder where we got the stuff all the time. Yes, I am a Goodwill shopper, too. I’ve been cleaning one closet and one area at a time for the last several months paring down the stuff – and a funny thing, it never seems to get much less though I cart boxes away and try not to bring stuff in. The stuff just breeds like rabbits. 🙂
Agree with the breeding aspect. We are preparing for an adoption garage sale and I have vowed to not bring more junk in without making sure I take something out to match what I brought in!! Though under our new guidelines nothing should come in and only go out!!!
Dear friend, I think YOUR main excess is stress. Please don’t stress too much over having spent a few dollars on clearance plates. You and your family give SO MUCH of yourselves to others. If the occasional deal-hunting gives you a few moments of enjoyment, keeps you sane, or provides a fun memory with your children, then it wasn’t a terrible thing. Now get busy spending your boundless energy de-junking your house and NOT feeling guilty and stressing over this. Donate the junk. (Maybe donate the 2T-3T clothes to me? ha!) Work harder to resist the “deals” in the future, or better yet, hunt deals specifically to donate. Let. it. go.
My excess is definitely time. I spend too much of it watching TV. But I’m going to be a little better this year.
Funny friend!! A year ago I would have agreed but we have worked very hard to cut stress out. We are not the family that will scoot children from here to there and be on every committee, instead the path we have chosen is to serve as a family…we love it.
Your sweet for your permission…and as I de-junk I will check for Miss T.
Turn off the t.v. my friend!
I can totally see myself doing the closet thing and my kiddos looking at me with a mixture of confusion and horror. aaahhhh…I tend to go overboard and forget to do all things in love.
What you have written is so good. I just need to remind myself not to run anyone over in the process of simplfying my life. Oh, how I want my life to be a reflection of His life! He is so good!
The one could not stop laughing and the others paid no attention to me. Clearly it was effective. 🙂
I want this book. I’m ready! I’m afraid I have too many books and too many trinkets from trips to Target. I can drop a wad of cash there in 35.4 seconds.
Thanks for this!
Target is one of my weakness as well!