On Keeping My Options Open–Because You Never Know

I grew up in a household with a mercurial, creative, option-loving parent. He meant well, but his word simply wasn’t good–at least in the plans he made for us. (His word was a bond in business and he paid dearly for his loyal ethics). That meant for me, things often felt out of control. I didn’t know what would happen next and so I learned to keep my options open and to hold on to things–because you never knew when you might need to produce something he suddenly thought he wanted.

Twenty years in the military meant I worked hard to keep my options open in terms of possessions–because you never knew when those curtains might fit into a new house. For that reason I carried curtains from our third set of quarters, material I bought for 67 cents a yard because I knew we would only live in the house a year, all over the country for 17 years. I might find a place for them.

I never did.

Over the years, we collected my husband’s parents’ furniture and my parents’ furniture. We had a big house, but too many things as the children peeled away to their own lives. When we moved to our last house, I suggested throwing away all the furniture and starting over again. Or at least throwing away the old beat up furniture.

Closer scrutiny revealed that while my children had grown up unattached to a given house–owing to all the moves–they had transferred their allegiance to what went with them everywhere: the beat up furniture, the scarred piano, the lamps my husband made as a teenager.

Everything moved with us.

This morning we hauled away to the dump the old speaker, a pioneer Cerwin-Vega, my father-in-law built 50+ years ago. It anchored my husband’s childhood from a corner of the living room.  It’s taken up a corner of our garage for 10 years. We’ll never hook up an ipod to a speaker measuring 3x3x4 feet.

But even harder to give up was the old baby backpack someone gave me thirty years ago and which I used to haul my children around for a long time. I can’t carry my grandchildren in it, it truly is worn out, but something has kept it hanging on the wall in the garage for three moves where it was never used.

You know. Memories.

Sentiment trumping logic yet again.

The late author Larry Burkett used to talk about hoarding, not in the over-the-top sense we see on TV these days, but how our reluctance to trust God  makes us cling to things we no longer need. He pointed out we have plenty of clothing in America; no one should ever be in want. The problem is, too many people leave their excess clothes hanging in the closet when they really need to be shared with others.

I’m going to the closet next.

But his idea about a lack of faith reverberates in my soul. I cling to things because I might need them some day, not because they’re being used today. That may be sensible in some arenas–we’ve got extra tiles for the foyer which we’ll need to replace broken ones this week. But do I really need the dress I wore to the Navy ball fifteen years ago? The jeans that are too big? The jacket I never wore? If I cleared them out, I could have more order in my closet and possibly more options.

How could I have more options if I get rid of something?

Clearing out the excess enables me to see the root–the primary, the most important. Old clothes, old furniture, old memories can get in the way of today–what I need to think about and deal with in the present.

Ultimately, the children didn’t care what happened to the old sofas–several went to college with them after all. But they did care about the important: what they did with that furniture while growing up–built forts, read books together and laughed. While they occasionally wax nostalgic for something they owned once, they really prefer to share the memory between them.

My garage is emptier with that speaker gone–less weighty, too. Without a useless item, I have more options and I can trust God will fill that empty space, or leave it open. After all, I still have options–they’re just different.

 

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