Nine Reasons I Don't Want My Mother's Stuff

Two evenings ago, I had the honor and pleasure of speaking to a group of women at a ladies' tea at a nearby church; and the whole evening was delightful.  But one incident in particular is sticking out in my memory and forcing me to consider it in greater depth!

At my table sat an older lady whom I had never met before.  I got a kick out of her when she glanced tenderly at my expansive midsection and asked, "Is this your first?"  Her eyes couldn't help but widen a little when I cheerily announced, "No, this is my sixth!"  :)

But later in the conversation, as we ate a delicious dinner together, the talk turned to other things; and she confided to us that her daughter (who happens to be in the same general life category as I am, since she too is a homeschooling mother with young children) isn't interested in someday acquiring the things that her mother has taken such joy in collecting through the years--things like Hummel figurines, for example.  This lady remembers well when Hummels were all the rage and were, in fact, quite valuable; but now their value has apparently come down--not only in the world of collectors but also, and more significantly, in her daughter's mind.

She leaned across the table towards me and asked pointedly, "Do you want your mother's stuff?"

A little caught off-guard by her directness, I thought for a few seconds about how I should answer.  Deciding that honesty was perhaps the best policy ;-) and hoping that my directness in return would not seem insensitive, I answered her.  "No," I said, "I really don't want her stuff."

If she was taken aback, she didn't let on; and I hoped that my further explanation would help to clarify my reasoning--and who knows, perhaps she would understand her own daughter's thinking a little better, too.  In that conversation, I didn't have time to tell her all my thoughts about this subject; but I did at least touch on reasons 2, 3, 4, and 5 that I list below.  Since then, I have continued to ponder this topic and have returned to the same conclusion.  No, I really don't want my mother's stuff.  But why?

Before I dive into my reasons, I will mention that as a child, I was very much into stuff; and my dad (who will probably be one of the first people to read this post, early riser that he is!) can attest to how much junk I accumulated in a short amount of time!  I had a desk that had a top that lifted so items could be placed inside; and as the days went by, I would find more and more things that I "needed" to keep in that desk.  The pile of contents would grow so high that eventually the lid wouldn't even shut and I would be forced to sort through the pile, discard most of it, and once again have a neat pile of only the really important stuff in my desk.

But did I ever keep it that way--neat and clean with all the essentials?  I did not.  It didn't take long before I would stick something "important" in there, and the cycle would start all over again.

When I was a newlywed and first learned about the five love languages, I knew right away that the language of gifts was a big one for me.  It wasn't that I was such an awful, greedy person; it was simply that things were so much more than things!  Each item was a memory, often an expression of love or perhaps a remembrance of a joyful time.  Everything in my house had a story; and if anyone had time to listen, I could tell them about the person who gave me the blue teapot...and when I received that particular cookbook...and the significance of the plates we used at dinner...and which aunt gave me the blanket on our bed and which one gave me the sheets.  Nobody ever had the patience to inquire about all of those; but if they had, I could have told them!!  ;-)

A few days ago, my 10-year-old son David wanted to get some chewing gum out of the gum box we have in the cupboard; and I "encouraged" (read: forced) him to finally chew the last little bit of gum in the Bubble Tape package that had been rolling around in the gum box ever since David got it months ago.  David agreed to chew that gum; and as soon as he had put it in his mouth, he started heading upstairs with the package in his hand.  Josiah, instantly discerning the intentions of the brother with whom he shares a room, stopped him in his tracks by saying, "You are NOT going to keep that, David!"  :)

Well, of course, David very much wanted to keep it; and he appealed to his big brother's emotions and intellect by explaining how it was the very first Bubble Tape package he had ever had and how it could come in handy for storing something and so forth.  At that point, I intervened and "encouraged" David to be willing to throw away the package; and he then did so.  But the whole time, I was seeing myself in his shoes.  That's EXACTLY what I would have done when I was his age!

Somewhere along the line, I changed.  When I wonder why, these nine reasons come to mind.

1. When Jeff and I met as students in Israel, my parents were not immediately thrilled with the idea of me beginning a romantic relationship with him.  (As soon as he came to visit us in Virginia a few months later, they were then immediately thrilled, but not while he was still some strange California dude wooing me in Jerusalem!)  :)  When they saw my heart being drawn towards him, they urged me to not accept any goodbye gifts from him because at that point, they thought it best if he quickly and quietly slipped from my mind when I returned to Virginia (and returned to my senses, it would seem), and a treasured item from him might be a snare that continued to trap me.  :)  As it turned out, Jeff abided by their wishes and gave me no farewell gifts (although the flowers he picked for me during field trips in the countryside of Israel remained in my Bible and other books where I had pressed them).  :)  But he did give me memories.  From him, I learned that experiences can be more valuable than physical gifts.  Our dinner at an Argentinian steakhouse (an extravagant expense for someone on a limited student budget), our walk through Hezekiah's Tunnel (because he couldn't fathom me leaving Israel without having experienced that), our retracing of Jesus's footsteps from the Old City out to the Mount of Olives on the night of Passover, our late-night talk in the garden of the school we were attending--none of these left me with a physical souvenir to take with me back to the States, but oh, how they all filled my mind and heart with the wonder of being someone special to Jeff Fisher!!!  :)  That was, I suppose, the beginning of my breaking away from the power of possessions, but I still had a long way to go.

2. A huge advancement in the journey of minimizing the value I placed on stuff occurred during a three-step process before and during our years in Israel as a married couple.  The first step came when we were asked to move to Israel, with the understanding that we were only allowed to take two suitcases each.  To reduce our possessions from a townhouse with all the "necessary" things a couple and their baby needed to two suitcases each was a daunting task, to say the least; but we were so very excited to be moving to Israel that we tackled the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, giving away a lot of stuff, selling some, throwing away some, keeping some in a storage unit, and storing a few very treasured things at Jeff's sister's house.  I'm sure I probably congratulated myself on how spiritually mature I was because I could take the Two Suitcase Challenge and was therefore obviously free from the love of material possessions!  :)  But that first step wasn't the last one.  While we were in Israel, a season of worse-than-normal wildfires hit southern California; and not only was Jeff's parents' home in Big Bear in danger, so was his sister's home (where our grand piano Jeff gave me for our wedding, my cedar chest made from trees that grew on my grandparents' farm, etc. was stored), and so was the storage unit--not all from the same wildfire, but all of them from fires in their respective areas.  I remember thinking, "Lord, haven't I given up enough?  Isn't it sufficient that I got rid of so much stuff and was able to bring very little with me to Israel?  Are you really going to test me yet again to see if my heart is fully committed to you in this area?"  I didn't realize another test was ahead.  After we had been in Israel for a while, we decided that when we returned to the States, we would plan to settle in Virginia to be close to my parents who didn't have a child close by to care for them as they got older (in contrast to Jeff's mom who was living with his sister and was well taken care of).  Jeff's mom generously offered to pay for the cost of moving our stuff across the country to Virginia, and so the arrangements were made.  The truck was loaded with the possessions we had deemed Very Most Important when we had moved to Israel (because everything unimportant was gotten rid of), and a date was set for when it was supposed to arrive in Virginia.  Except, it didn't arrive.  As it turned out, the moving company was a fraud; and we might still be waiting for our stuff except that one of Jeff's brothers had his company's lawyer threaten to sue the moving company, and then eventually our stuff showed up in Virginia.  During the anxious days when we were in Israel, way too far away to do anything about the situation and not even sure what state that moving truck was in and whether it would ever show up, I had a few conversations with the Lord that went something like this, "Really, God???  Weren't Round One and Round Two sufficient to convince You that I indeed love You more than I love my stuff?  I mean, c'mon, even ol' Abraham only had to take his son Isaac to Mount Moriah once before You and he and everyone else was convinced that You were really the first place in his heart.  But You make me endure this test three times?  Is that really necessary???"  I can smile about it now, but I wasn't doing much smiling then, I can assure you!  Well, needless to say, after three rounds of the always entertaining challenging game Say Goodbye to Your Stuff, I think I learned the lesson God was trying to teach me, and I'm pretty sure I've held more lightly to my possessions ever since.  :)

3. When you have stuff, you have to dust/move/vacuum around/otherwise maintain it.  Who wants to waste time dusting a shelf full of knickknacks anyway?  :)

4. When both sets of my grandparents died, my parents happened to be in a position where they lived closest or were most available or were for some reason given the responsibility to oversee the dividing of the estate; and I, being 14 years old when my dad did that for his parents and 23 when my mom did that for her parents, had a front row seat to watch the process.  Here's what stood out to me most: they and their siblings did not argue about who got what.  I had heard of other families that were torn apart, sometimes forever, by fights over the division of the stuff; but I watched my parents and aunts and uncles peacefully and unselfishly decide who got each item; and that made a huge impression on me.  I learned from that to never argue with a sibling about an item from my parents because relationships are more important than stuff.  I cannot think of a single item in my parents' house right now that I would lay any claim to if I knew my sister or brothers wanted it.  Not a single thing!

5. Since I am still very much in the stage of having young children who seem to be accompanied by lots and lots and LOTS of stuff, I'm constantly feeling like I'm on the verge of drowning in things anyway.  Why would I want to add to that?  I'm interested in getting rid of stuff, not accumulating it!

6. I'm no expert in social science or cultural trends, but I think there's been a significant shift from the days of the generation raised by those who experienced the Great Depression (and as a result, learned to "never throw anything away because it might come in handy someday!", the motto of twist-tie-saving women all over America) til now when an interest in and desire to embrace minimalism has become widespread enough to hardly be revolutionary anymore (think how quickly the tiny house movement is spreading!).  Maybe because all our lives, we've had an abundance of stuff and have never truly known want, we feel free to get rid of stuff, being confident that we can replace it if necessary.  I'm not saying that we're wiser than our elders, but we have been shaped by different influences in a very different world than they grew up in.  We read Becoming Minimalist and use words like "declutter."  Meanwhile, we still have a hundred times more possessions than most of our fellow citizens on planet earth!  (Check out the book Material World by Peter Menzel to be utterly convicted of the excess of our American lifestyle.)

7. Some years ago, I was faithfully reading FlyLady emails and following (well, trying to) her methods for keeping house and being happy all at the same time.  :)  I believe it was in one of those emails that I read about a lady who, at the time of her death, could fit all that she owned in the trunk of her car.  She didn't need any more than that and had successfully downsized through the years, keeping only the barest of essentials.  "What a gift!" a generation of people who have needed to clean out their parents' houses (and barns, like my mother did after her parents died) would exclaim.  "How wonderful for the person himself or herself to be able to make the choices about how to best deal with all the stuff!  What a blessing for the children to not have to make those decisions!"  I obviously haven't whittled down my possessions to only what can fit in my car.  ;-)  But my parents have done a tremendous job of downsizing, and I am so grateful for their efforts.  Even now, my dad continues the process of getting rid of what is unimportant--for example, shredding medical charts that are so old that they're no longer needed.  We use some of that shredded paper as mulch on the garden under leaves or grass clippings, and I love knowing that I won't have to someday deal with piles and piles and piles of medical charts!  :)

8. Technology has changed the world so much that it seems less important to keep actual things because we can electronically store the important stuff--photos and stories, mostly.  My dad has scanned a large number of family photos into the computer which not only will save me hours of time someday but also is preferable to me doing it because he actually knows who is in the photos!  :)  I won't need to clear a shelf off for photo albums from my grandparents, for example, because he has already done the time-consuming work of using technology to store them.  Another example: my mother loved Grace Livingston Hill books and has quite a collection of them; but since they are available on the Kindle (most, if not all of them, for free), I don't need to keep the actual books.

9. Lastly, Jeff and I and our children have had the benefit of an especially close relationship with my parents during the past decade; and as a result, I don't feel like I need any particular item to remember my mother by because we've made so many memories together.  Maybe I would feel differently if I had lived farther away and didn't have such a close connection at this stage of life; maybe then I would think, "Yes, I do need my mother's pearl earrings to feel close to her," or "Seeing her butter churn in my kitchen would really warm my heart after she's gone."  But my mother is in my heart, and so is my dad.  Moments like this trip with my mother about a week and a half ago to a delicious local ice cream shop fill my heart and my memory, and that is far more important than any physical item from her could be.  Besides, as I have taken over some practical tasks through the years (cooking supper, for example), I have received things from my parents: my mother's extra 9x13 pans, her pressure canner, her pan for angel food cake, etc.  Those practical items have been much appreciated because they're useful--not clutter!  :)

Do I want my mother's stuff?  I do not.  Oh, if the red bowl with the clear lid that she always used for cranberry salad ever comes to me, I'll use it when I make cranberry salad for the family at Thanksgiving and Christmas and for other special occasions.  But if someone else in the family wants it, by all means, let him or her take it!  It's just stuff!

The more important question is this: do I want to keep spending time with my mom and my dad until God calls them home.  I do!  Of course I do!  Because when it comes to stuff, you can't take it with you, after all; but the people--oh, the people are what matters!  The soul stretches into eternity; and in the end, it is only our relationships with God and with each other that matter.

And I'm pretty sure you can't tuck a Hummel figurine into the pocket of your bathrobe when you float up to heaven.  ;-)