Not too long ago I took a picture of my slightly rundown but very loved couch, that made a tiny apartment in Chicago feel like a tiny home. I took this picture in the hopes that someone on the interwebs would see it and fall in love as I had over and over again the past three years. Maybe they would deem it worthy of a few dollars or at the very least take it off my hands as I prepared to move back in with my parents. They say ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’, but I don’t think anyone was listening.
If the picture could speak it’d tell you about the hours spent watching movie trailers because I couldn’t just pick one movie to watch on a night in. It would tell you that I’m extremely clumsy with my food, especially when it comes to soups, soy sauce and water (which thankfully doesn’t stain). It would tell you that it could actually hold upwards of three weeks worth of my semi-dirty laundry (because they weren’t too dirty that they couldn’t be worn at least once more).
That picture would also tell you that I spent hours talking to my parents over the phone and having the occasional breakdown. It would tell you that sometimes the best nights are spent with a bottle of wine, a good playlist and a best friend. It would tell you that it’s okay to spend sun up to sun down not leaving your apartment because the world didn’t seem like the best place to walk out into that day. That picture could probably tell you an actual thousand words on my life and my three years in Chicago, more so than I would maybe like it to.
No one was listening to that picture I posted up on the interwebs. No one came calling or emailing or texting to give this couch a home. On my last night in Chicago my two friends and I had to force my beloved couch through a very small back door in order to place it by the back dumpster. Unceremoniously, I said good-bye to my couch and my life in Chicago.
It all seems very poetic, but these past couple of weeks as I’ve settled back into my childhood bedroom and returned to living with my parents I’ve felt a little like that couch may have felt being placed by the back dumpster. My couch had so much purpose and meaning in our little life in Chicago and within the span of an hour or so it was out on the street. It had spent over three years being in almost constant use. I spent over three years in constant use. Whether it were work, spending time with friends, running errands, making plans, going on trips, whatever else I could spend my time doing I was doing it. My body and my emotions somehow aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves as I wait in anticipation for what’s coming next.
This seems a bit deep for talking about a couch and maybe it’s a stretch in the metaphor department. Here’s some good news that I need to continuously remind myself of. My couch, as loved as it was, only needed to be in that state of limbo for a short time. Before the sun rose the following day someone had already come by with their pickup truck to grab my couch and prepare it for a new home.
I’m in this limbo just waiting in anticipation for what’s in store for me next. I question myself, I feel useless at times and I lose sight of the driving force behind all of this. It’s a daily reminder we might all need to give ourselves that God has got us. He has a greater plan and it’s in our own free will to follow along with it or to stay stagnant. I have to keep reminding myself that even though I feel like I’m sitting out by the back dumpsters, God’s coming around in his pickup truck to take me onto the next thing. After that will be something else and so on and so forth. I decided about six months ago to be all in with God and I can’t lose sight of that now.
I think that’s enough trying to compare myself to a couch, but let me leave you with a word from God (because He’s the best and knows all things and is way better than me trying to relate my life to a couch).
“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’”
Jeremiah 29:11
