Friday, July 13, 2012

IMPORTANT DATE!!! AUGUST 10TH AND 11TH

I have stooped to an all time low with this blog. This blog served me well while I was in England and now most of you know I am back in the States getting ready for the next part of my journey. The past few weeks have included a lot of packing and unpacking. Now begins a more daunting packing and unpacking. As I prepare to leave home once again and consider what it is that I will need for the journey I look at all I have collected along the way. My parents are trying to reduce the amount of stuff (to put it nicely) they have, in addition they are trying to help me out financially as I prepare to go to the Dominican Republic. Therefore they decided a garage sale would be a good idea. I agree! The process is exciting, and troubling at the same time. I have been going through my own boxes of stuff from the past 27 years. I really do mean the past 27 years too! Each box I open is a reminder of a few things:

1st - The things and stuff that have accumulated over the years
2nd- The amount of work attached to things
3rd- The binding and loosing we find in being attached to things
4th- The memories we attach to things
5th- The things we attach to memories
6th- The childhood I thought I could put in a box
7th- The hopes and dreams of one day owning a home and having a family boxed up and put in storage

All the things that I have, I have allowed to serve as a map to who I was and who I want to be. I saved my dolls, toys, pillows, pictures, awards, pots, pans and anything and everything else you can think of. From cards yet to be written, to cards sent to me on my fifth birthday, I have saved so much stuff. What is more is the condition I have attempted to preserve it all in. All my dolls were returned to their boxes from which they came when I first packed them up ten years ago in Worms NE and decided it was time I grow up. I preserved a piece of my childhood for ten years without looking at it until just recently. Now as I unpack these boxes I am faced with my past, present and future. My past being the joy I found in collecting these porcelain dolls, toys figurines and anything and everything else. I can tell you who gave me each thing, where it came from, when I received it, and why I found it to be so special. I look at all my stiff and think about how I boxed it all up with the intention of perhaps either placing into a place of my own, my own home or giving them to the daughter I had hoped to have. Now, today I look at the same dolls bearing in mind that I have no child or prospective spouse, and I remember that I can't take them with me.

Most of this stuff I have not laid eyes upon for the past ten years, and yet I have held them as a person holds insurance. Knowing that they were in a box in the basement was good enough for me as a promise of what was and what is to be. Today I embrace a different truth and promise. As I reflect on "things" and "stuff" and "junk" and "boxes" of cardboard intended to lock and seal in my hopes dreams and expectations, I realized that it is as King Solomon said; "Nothing but a grasping after the wind." I am trying to solidify in my identity the fact that my home is not a place where I can take these collections with me, in heaven or on earth. I have been called into a mission where I am freed from the burden of things. It is both law and gospel. I can look at the boxes and know I have been blessed abundantly and cling to the promise that therein lies, God will continue to bless me, the evidence is not just in the box but in the intangible truths attached to those things. The reminder that there were several people who loved me and gifted me with the unnecessary luxuries of dolls and toys.

 I can also be freed from the things as I cling to the promise that whether or not I have a home, family, kids, spouse, the contents of the box does not insure this but the Gift Giver God! The God who has given me my body, soul, eyes ears and all my members, my reason and all my senses and still takes care of them. I can trust in HIM! I can cling to HIM and moth and rust cannot destroy that promise and my faith. It is also a promise I revisit on a daily basis given to me in baptism which I return to every day of my life until they place the pall over my casket. God is the author and perfecter of my faith that is not contained within cardboard boxes or things. He is not bound by my own limited dreams of owning a home and having 15 kids and being married to a strawberry/peach farmer (when I was a child I reasoned like a child and I loved strawberries, peaches and the idea of a big family- so there you go!).  God is taking me on a journey and blessed me along the way. Like my mother said as we were working on some of the boxes; "Katie, it isn't the things that matter, in the end it's the people" and I would also like to add, "it's also the Promise."

Okay so this may not be supporting the cause for which I initially wrote this but the whole point of this was to really inform everyone that I am selling my childhood. Or rather, I am having a garage sale to help with funding my mission in the DR. So if you are interested in supporting me by buying some of my old dreams in support of a new one then e-mail me for the address of this sale. Thanks to everyone for all your prayers and support thus far. The sale will be Aug 10th and 11th so if you have a college kid and you need stuff for them or you have a little girl and are looking early for Christmas or birthday gifts, or you collect dolls, or do crafts of any kind, or are looking for antiques or a good bargain, e-mail me and I will send the details of the sale to you. kziegler1985@hotmail.com

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