It's Almost Embarrassing...

...no, scratch the "almost."  It IS embarrassing to see how many games my family owns.

 I had the opportunity to do just that yesterday because my extra project for this week is cleaning and organizing the living room; and our game closet, which had gotten seriously messy, was the biggest part of that project.  With nowhere to go yesterday, it was the perfect opportunity to tackle this time-consuming task; and the first step was emptying everything out of this closet.

 When I did so, the embarrassment struck.  How is it that so many people around the world struggle to have even the basic necessities of life, and we, on the other hand, have SO MANY GAMES?  I couldn't help but think of the book Material World by Peter Menzel; when I read that some time ago, I felt convicted by the amount of STUFF we have--and grateful that my family's things weren't spread out on our lawn and photographed for the world to see!  Now I'm doing a tiny portion of that to myself by showing you these pictures.

It's not as if these games represent a huge financial amount; in fact, the majority of them were not purchased new by us, but came to us as gifts, or from thrift stores or yard sales, or were handed down from my parents (or in the case of three or four games, from my grandparents!).  But even without having a hefty price tag attached to it, this pile of games still astonishes me.

As I was sorting through these stacks, I took out a few to send along with a friend who is going on an out-of-the-country mission trip soon, and I also took from this pile to add to my take-to-the-thrift-store pile.  But everything else went back into the closet: neatly sorted, with torn boxes taped up, ready to be pulled out and played with my family and our friends.

That's the good part about doing a task like this: it reminds us of what we have and prompts us to use it more than we had been.  I found games that I had actually forgotten we had, and we've already enjoyed playing them (like Scrabble Slam which Josiah and David and I played, amidst strong bursts of hearty laughter, until LATE last night).

The boys had not forgotten that we had Twister, that's for sure!  But seeing it again brought it to the forefronts of their minds, and yesterday and today they've had fun with it again.

 Moriah saw the marble track and recruited Shav to help her set it up.

 He kindly did so, and then played with it, too.

Sometimes I wonder how to react when we are confronted with the abundance (over-abundance?!) of our possessions.  Tonight I think I'll settle for the reaction of being grateful, so grateful, for the blessings we have...and as we play these games, I'll thank God for the privilege of making new memories with the ones I love.

~ Josiah and David playing Tenzi with our friends Ryan and Sarah on Tuesday evening ~