LiveDifferent Challenge (22): Use Stuff, Love People; Enjoy Things, Worship God

I will not lie–I’m loving having a home.  Sometimes it feels a little funny, when I pull in the driveway I still feel like I’m visiting my brother.  But filled with our things, and with Jeff and Dutch, it has quickly become home to me.  I have however, noticed a very subtle change during this unpack (as mentioned before, I’ve done this 8 times in our married life).  I’ve noticed that stuff has become markedly more exterior than ever before.  Let me explain.

I love beauty.  I’ve finally come to terms with the fact that it is natural and normal to relish and enjoy the beauty in things. God does.   So naturally, my goal as a wife and mother is not only to create a place of utility, with functional furniture and easily accessible dishes, but to also create a place of beauty, tranquility, and peace.  I firmly believe that that is a right and worthy goal.  It has actually been really fun getting this house ready because our very goal is to have the house showcase-ready for potential buyers and weekend open-houses.  So it’s actually my responsibility to have the house beautiful, and is a perfect excuse to exercise my creativity in home decor. But, as I’ve unpacked and cleaned, arranged, hung pictures, fluffed pillows, folded towels, I’ve noticed that though there is certainly a joy, a very deep and profound joy, in creating this beautiful haven we now call home, it’s strangely exterior to my heart.  Before, keeping and beautifying our home was very much part of me, and of course it still is to an extent, but it no longer has any bearing on who I am as a person.  My house does not define me.  And in that, I’m surprised by the fact that I no longer love my stuff.  I don’t!  I don’t love my clothes, I don’t love my furniture, and I don’t love my house!  They are wonderful, beautiful, functional, useful, and I thank God each day for all of the stuff that I have that carries me through my day.  I am thankful for the car that runs, the beautiful dining room table that was purchased 8 months ago for a song at a furniture sale, that Oneida dishes I found at Goodwill yesterday for 99cents.  I am thankful for these things, but I don’t love them.  I use them and enjoy them. I love people, and worship God.

I’d like to think that I’m just way behind the curve and the rest of the world has already mastered this concept.  But sadly, I think we’re all still learning.  Right now I’m studying for the upcoming retreat, exploring the final session topic: Enjoying Fulfillment: How to enjoy God’s blessing without worshipping them.  Sadly, in our culture we do worship stuff.  We love stuff and use people.  We get married and use our spouse to provide us happiness, then when the spouse no longer fills that use and fails to make us happy, we move onto another spouse who we then use to make us happy again.  We use our friends, family, co-workers.  We engage in relationships and friendships so long as that person contributes to our well-being. As soon as they deplete our emotional resources or do not contribute to our happiness, we move on.  We use people.

And sadly, we love things.  We are notorious for the delusional belief that more stuff will make us happy.  Now that we’ve moved, we were planning on taking a trip to Ikea to get inexpensive things we need for the house.  Our city’s Ikea has been open for over a year, but we’ve never gone because I didn’t want to create discontentment in my heart about not having a home (like going shopping when you have no money).  So we figured now we’d go and find stuff we need.  But strangely, as I’ve thought this week about taking a trip there, I cannot think of any stuff that we need.  (Well, we need a plastic shower curtain liner, which will run me about $1.50, and we need a little curtain rod for Dutch’s room, which is $3.99.)  Besides that, I can’t for the life of me think of anything that we need.  Blessed state!  The mistake I (and all Americans) usually make is that we love stuff, so we love to go to stores to see what we need, because we love to see all the stuff that we supposedly need.

So, I have not arrived, but I am beginning to see a tiny hair of progress by the grace of God.  The clothing fast (I’m almost at 5 months without buying clothes!), the year of living with mom and dad, the jobless state that has been our life :-), I’m beginning to see how God was slowly extracting poisonous roots of materialism from my heart. I know there are probably still some pretty stubborn ones in there, but I’ll trust God to continue to root those out.

So, where am I going with all this?  I suppose I’m just challenging myself, and you if you wish, to make a conscious effort this week to simply use stuff and enjoy people.  Don’t use the people in your life–love them unconditionally.  Don’t love the stuff you own, use it.  Enjoy the things that you have, but gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and worship Him, the one who made all things.  How can we do this practically?  For me this means being content with the state of our home, without looking for more things that we “need”.  It means pouring my time and effort into being with people, ministering, working on my notes for the retreat, playing with Dutch, talking with Jeff.  It means spending less time thinking about how much weight I’ve gained (6 lbs. since my last prenatal appointment–good grief! Ok, done thinking about it.), or how all of Dutch’s pants are too short and he looks kind of dorky.

Use and enjoy the things that you have.  Love the people in your life (even the difficult ones!), and worship the God who gives us all things freely to enjoy.  Worship Him alone.