Sometimes Mother Nature takes a swipe at our stuff, and we find out what’s important and what’s not.
We had a little water in our basement – the ground was so saturated from 2+ feet of rain in a few weeks that water began oozing through concrete blocks. After some initial dismay (Really? This is the moment the shop vac decides to die?), I felt relief at some items not damaged and indifferent to most that were. The truth was, I was more than a little relieved to be able to be rid of some of that stuff. Do you have those things, too – piles of stuff that have accumulated and are neither treasured nor useful?
It’s an interesting mental exercise: if a natural disaster took a bunch of my stuff, what would I be most relieved to find still intact, in the wreckage? I suspect that in a real disaster, I would be grateful for anything that was a link to a swept-away past. Any photo, any old Christmas ornament, would be precious under those circumstances.
Flashes of insight come relatively easily; change, not so easily. After the realization that I was not sad that some old drawings and paintings are gone, and realizing how little I really cared about a lot of stuff I’d accumulated, life rolled on and I did nothing substantive to reduce the clutter.
Not content to let me congratulate myself on my bit of awareness, I was given a dream. In my dream, I was dead and being judged, and the Lord took me into my closet and pointed to the many clothes I rarely wore and gently asked me why I still had them when others needed them? Each tired shirt and sweater, dusty on a forgotten hanger, was a reproach against my selfishness and oblivion to others’ needs. Dickens’ Marley was weighed down with chains of money boxes; I fear I will drag chains of little-worn clothing, books and kitsch. It is time, once again, to start purging: cabinets, closets, overflowing shelves. There is a big box next to the closet – 2 x 2 x 3 – and it is rapidly filling with “stuff” that I hope someone really can use.
I am still not exactly grateful for that half-inch of stinky water in my basement, but thanks…I got the hint, and this time, I hope, it will stick.
Dr. Lori Puterbaugh
© 2015
Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.
