Over the past two days I have been packing up all my stuff in my room and selling off my furniture. I am now awaiting the departure of my flight to St. Louis where I will meet up with my brother to drive he and his wife’s things from St. Louis home to Florida. On they way we will stop in Atlanta and pick up all of my belongings which will fit in my pickup truck.
Sitting at graduation was interesting. I was sandwiched between one of my closest friends who also happened to be my fraternal big brother, and another brother from my fraternity who was a member of my pledge class. Afterwards my big brother friend Adam and I were talking about how the academic regalia and fineries of the event really made the idea that college was over sink in. Those kinds of endings always feel a little funny.
Today I helped my friend Cheese move a refrigerator to his summer dorm on-campus. Walking up to his dorm today I’m pretty sure is the first time I’ve been on campus since last week’s graduation. It felt like I was walking around my high school. Oglethorpe has become part of my past. I’m sure I’ll walk around the campus again, but never like I had for four years. So when did that feeling change. If I had helped Cheese move his refrigerator last Sunday, the day after graduation, would it have felt the same? When and how do those changes happen?
I had decided a several weeks ago that whatever I could not fit in my truck I would not take home, I don’t need it. So I went through my things in throw-out mode. A trash bag full of clothes, a broken X-Box with four controllers, some old pictures and letters from old girlfriends, a few VHS movies: I let it all go. I even went today to sell my dresser, TV, and La-Z-Boy to some resale shop down the street. Getting rid of all your stuff is a unique experience. It feels like it should hurt but it doesn’t. It’s really pretty liberating.
When the X-Box becomes MY X-Box, or the clothes become MY clothes, or the La-Z-Boy becomes MY La-Z-Boy, we think we need those things to stay who we are. So we move and we get bigger and bigger U-Haul trucks to take us with us. When we finally let all those things go, we find out they were never part of us. Or if they were it was only because we let them be a part of us. All we are is what God made us to be, and I think La-Z-Boys are comfortable, but they’re no match for the workmanship of the Maker.
When I leave in October, I am going to be leaving behind a lot more than a dresser, a TV, and a La-Z-Boy. In the same way that getting rid of my stuff felt like it should hurt, getting rid of MY life for a year probably will hurt. Still after all the hurting is over I am going to see that I shed a lot of things I really don’t need to be hauling around anymore and instead of spending time and effort maintaining the image of myself created by all my material and emotional stuff, I pray that God grants me His vision of who he created me to be, free from everything but His enduring Grace.
Life transitions. Oh what fun!
