Out of the Box

I helped a friend pack up today, getting ready for a move. I gotta say, I was kinda jealous. I can only DREAM of moving (and do, often). It was a lot easier than packing my own stuff up. I have a bad tendency to go through every little thing of my own, and before I know it, I've taken a trip several miles down Memory Lane and packed 1 or 2 measley boxes! Because the stuff wasn't mine, I could focus at the task at hand much better and was able to not only get everything boxed up, but had consolidated everything so much that I had several empty boxes left. That's one good thing that comes from moving alot, I guess.

Coincidentally my church's new sermon series is on hoarding. I missed last Sunday, so I'll have to watch the sermon online now, I just KNOW there's something in that sermon for me! I may move around a lot and can pack rather well, but I have A LOT of stuff to pack. I am, by definition, a hoarder. I hold on to most everything that means something to me. I have to learn to let go and I know that. Maybe by the end of this series I will be able to get rid of a lot of stuff that just becomes more of a pain in the butt to move than it does me any good to hang onto. You'd think that my moving around a lot would have taught me to 'travel light', I assure you the opposite is true. I've learned in all my years of moving that people go away, but you can hang onto something that person gave you forever.

My memory is so good some times, it's a curse. I wish I could simply forget the past. I know it'd be a lot easier than the pain of remembering. Unfortuantely happy memories can be just as painfil as unhappy ones. Funny how that works, right? In fact, when I think about it harder, unhappy memories make you glad to be rid of them, but the happy memories can be disheartening because you then realize that the happiness you felt IS a memory, it's a wonderful moment in time that you can't get back. Why DOES it make one sad to remember? I do know that you only really think of those 'happier' times when you're not happy with where you are in the present, maybe that's why they can cause so much pain.

Either way, happy or sad, it's always been hard for me to let go of the 'stuff'. That's more than evident when you look through my closets and attic! Maybe next time I move, I will have soaked up everything the sermon's on hoarding had to say and can finally part with all that stuff that's cluttering my life. Maybe when I move, but right now, when there's just me, I gotta hang onto my stuff :)