7, week 3

today was the last day of week 3's fast: possessions. i'm still sort of processing it. it felt natural to jump into this one on the tail end of the clothing fast. just realizing how weighed down i can be by all the excess in my closet ("i have nothing in my closet that i want to wear" actually means "i have very few outfits in my closet that i actually wear, so it's overwhelming digging through what i don't want to wear to find what i do."), and how freed i have felt in the past after "ridding the excess"... translates over into the rest of life as well. i mean, who needs 2 dozen bath towels in their home?? we decided that 3 per person is plenty.

this week, we cleaned out every inch of both bedrooms, the bathroom, the hall closets, and the rafters in the garage! paring down to what we actually need and use regularly. i'm sure we rid ourselves of at least half our clothes (again! we just did this in december! how did it creep back in?!) and a huge portion of the rest of our "stuff" in general.
the fact that my due date is 8 weeks away, and i had a couple of "nesting" energy bursts may have helped us get all this done... (also, in the process, we brought in the clothes and baby furniture we'll be needing oh-so-soon, and got everything rearranged and deep-cleaned :) 


but i wanted it to be about more than just "cleaning out our closets" yet again. a big focus of the book 7 is on the poor. part of what drove her to write it in the first place was interacting with the poor and really realizing how nauseatingly excessive her american dream lifestyle was. and so, her commitment for the third part of the book was to "give away 7 possessions a day for an entire month." i gladly took this as a challenge as well (yay! rid the excess! give away 7 things every day! ...for a week, not a month, of course). but she found, and so did i, that this was "too easy". just in the clothes i cleaned out from my closet, i had more than that to give away.
my big thing was i didn't want to just go make a random donation to Savers or Goodwill.
she points out in the book that the problem isn't that the rich don't WANT to give to the poor, it's that the rich don't KNOW the poor. there is a disconnect, and we don't even know what the needs of the poor are to be able to try to give to them what they need. so i wanted this to be more than a "purge" of my home. i wanted it to bless someone else that needed it.
so, the day after we cleaned it all out, we carted it over to an old friend's house, where they were going to be hosting a yard sale fundraiser so she could have a surgery she has been needing. still not the intentional person-to-person giving of a needed item i'd been hoping for, but it did some good. i will also be taking a few bags of baby clothes to a local church, where they have a "swap shop", where if a mom needs anything for her growing kiddos, she can come and take it. great ministry.
and found some friends who welcomed the diapers joey will no longer be using.
and i will be meeting up with a couple of friends from MOPS to pass on some baby items as well. so i guess i did end up finding 7 people/places to give. it just wasn't how i pictured it, i guess (in the book, she and her friends are able to furnish an entire apartment for a refugee family flying in that day - how cool would that be?!).

 and part of my commitment was to give away 7 handmade items, just knowing how much more personal that would be to me... and vulnerable. i totally haven't started that part yet.
since we're still in process, though, i think it's ok if it carries over into the next couple of weeks (and hopefully, into a generally generous lifestyle!). 


the one other thing i committed to, in light of paring down possessions, was to fast from estate sales that week. which was exceptionally difficult, since there were a BUNCH of good ones in our area over this past weekend! but it was a good exercise in stopping and taking stock of what we have, what we need, and what we don't need...

we went on a couple-night vacation at the beach during this time, so that took away from being able to continue with it, and since we've been back, we've been exhausted... and sort of paralyzed in the process of all the decision-making (does jason need all his seminary textbooks? maybe. maybe not. part of the hard part of all of this is discerning what is wise to hold onto, and what is straight-up hoarding).


so that's us in process. praying that we learn through this to both be scandalously generous, and good stewards of what we have been given. and so excited for the soul-space that is getting freed up by losing some of the clutter!


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week 4 begins in the morning, with our "media fast". i will not be blogging (or checking Facebook, instagram, or other phone apps/internet sites), just so you know. i'll be back in a week or so to let you know how it went! :)