Message from a Fortune Cookie

It always hits me a bit after the new year rolls around.  I have this insatiable desire to organize and get rid of stuff.  A couple years back I hit the big file cabinet that holds our personal papers.  I spent days going thorough every single folder, throwing out and shredding documents from years back and reorganizing what remained.  I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment after finishing up and gave myself a good old pat on the back.  Yep, I was pretty proud of myself.

Therefore, when the subject came up on what we're keeping and what we're not, I thought to myself, "I've got this!  I mean, pack rat I am not.  Clutter?  Not my thing.  Too much stuff?  Absolutely not!" 

Several weeks earlier Larry had announced to the church that he would be retiring sometime during the summer.  With that announcement came the daunting realization that we had a big job ahead of us.  It's called packing, and it would be nothing like that move from seminary to our first pastorate.  For seven months we had lived in a tiny furnished apartment in student housing.  I think all we had were some wedding gifts, a few kitchen items, a vacuum cleaner and a dining room table (sans chairs) that we bought at an auction for fifteen or twenty dollars.  Fast forward 42 years and the accumulation was, needless to say, quite significant.

The big items weren't the problem.  What we needed we would keep.  What we didn't need, we could  sell or give away.  But the smaller stuff, well, where to begin?  Besides three closets full of clothes and bookshelves stuffed with books and movies and photo albums, there were boxes, totes and large containers full of holiday decorations, old letters, music books, toys, dolls, old photographs and Packer paraphernalia.  There were trunks full of costumes for dress up and puppets from our missionary days.  Board games and puzzles filled up the corners of the attic and children's books cluttered the shelves along with the old VHS tapes that hold the memories of those growing up years with our children.   

Yep, we had stuff.  And lots of it.  So where to start?  It wasn't 30 minutes later that I was peering into one of the kitchen cupboards.  Even though the move was several weeks away yet, I felt the need to start, to begin somewhere, and this was as good a place as any.  The first thing I spied was an unopened fortune cookie from Chinese takeout a few weeks earlier. Removing it from its plastic wrapping, I broke open the cookie, pulled out the tiny slip of paper and read the following: Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens. 

Message from a fortune cookie  

Well that was certainly not applicable where I was concerned. Unnecessary possessions? I didn't have all that many things that are unnecessary, and the stuff I do have, it's just a natural accumulation of lots of years of living.  And besides, how seriously should I take some saying that comes out of a fortune cookie anyways? And yet the timing was uncanny.  Well, since I was in the cupboard I figured I'd get through my spices, some of which I knew I'd had for a v-e-r-y long time.  By the time I was done I'd tossed a dozen or more tins and jars of the stuff, some expired by several years I'm embarrassed to admit,  into the trash.   But it felt good, really good.  I could do this.  Round one done.

A few days later I hit the closets. Things went pretty well until I came to the one that held those things that I no longer wear but hang on to because of some emotional connection.   I found myself staring at the purple dress I wore at both Fawn's and Autumn's college graduations.  I hadn't worn that thing in 10 years and knew I probably never would again.  I'd tried it on a few years prior, thinking it'd make a great Easter dress but it was a bit tight in the stomach.  Unnecessary possessions are unnecessary burdens.  It was time to let it go.  Stupid fortune cookie. I just had to open it.

My purple dress donated to the church's clothes closet

In the meantime Larry was attacking his study with a vengeance.   Books, old sermons, teaching notes, letters, pictures, photographs, gifts and assorted paraphernalia being packed away in totes, tossed or given away.  A couple of young pastors were on the receiving end as he cleared a few hundred books out of his library, some newer, others going back to seminary days.  "I don't need them.  Might as well give them to someone who can use them." I'd never seen him so pragmatic, this man who is notoriously sentimental.

That same pragmatism came a bit harder for me, surprisingly, as I am not quite as nostalgic as my husband.  But reality was starting to sink in.  Our forty plus years of pastoring was coming to an end and some pretty big challenges lay ahead, the first of which was getting all our personals from New York to Alabama.   Larry reserved a moving truck from Budget and the date set for loading was put on the calendar.

"I don't ever want to do this again." Over the course of Larry's career, we had pastored in five different states and served in Central America as missionaries for a time, but I didn't remember moving ever being this hard. The seeming insurmountable task of packing up our entire household coupled with the thought of leaving the people and area we had grown to love for a far-off place was overwhelming.  And I repeated my sentiments once again.  "I don't ever want to do this again.  Ever."

I'm not saying that God had that little slip of paper put into that fortune cookie specifically for me.  But it was still a reminder to me over those days and weeks of sorting and packing and tossing and giving away that just because we had it didn't mean we needed it. When the last item was loaded, or should I say squeezed, onto that truck and the door was slammed shut, I felt a pang of guilt.  There was a lot of stuff in there, and despite the multiple trips to the local thrift store, I wondered if we had let enough of it go.

Our friend John showing up to help load up 

"Why did we bring this with us?"  We had been unpacking, settling back into our Alabama home,  and I had already asked Larry that same question several times while holding up the items in question.  We have already made two or three trips to one of the thrift stores here in town and have plans to haul over another load sometime soon.   Why indeed?