Selling Everything!

We're T-12 days until “Operation: Sell Everything” (a.k.a. having our garage sale). I have a love/hate relationship with garage sales. I love making money on crap that I don't want or need anymore, but I hate the hours upon hours of work they involve. Especially because the work requires lots of organization, which is not one of my strong points. I'm also a procrastinator. So although I could have been leisurely going through each room of the house within the past 6 months since we found out we'd be leaving, I decided to wait until the last 3 weeks to start really going through the house instead. Because who doesn't love to be overwhelmed and completely stressed out when working against the clock?!

Looking at and going through the massive amount of stuff we've accumulated over the past few years makes me all the more anxious to get rid of it all and live a more simple life with few belongings. As I was going through the bins of kids' clothes that we've saved, I couldn't believe how many clothes I had in some sizes. The sheer number of 0-3 month girl clothes we have is ridiculous. As I stacked them up, the pile went higher than the bin they're supposed to fit in. The outfits and dresses are all adorable, but our girls wore some of those outfits maaaaaybe once. I only dressed them up in cute outfits when they were being seen by people. If we were home, most days they would stay in a sleeper!

As I'm going through things, I'm very thankful that I'm not a sentimental person. It has made it so much easier to go through the baby clothes and other things that I could get choked up over if I were a different personality. I'm just thankful for the memories they bring and have very little trouble saying good-bye to them, hoping they'll bless someone else. I guess to me, things don't replace the moment or event so they don't mean as much to me. I'm so pragmatic about things, though, that Robert wonders if I have a sentimental bone in my body. He was appalled when I wanted to throw away dried flowers from our wedding. I guess that does seem cold. What can I say? I'm Scandinavian.

Please keep us in your prayers these next couple of weeks as we continue to get ready for this sale. Having so much still to do, I've been identifying with Peter lately as he walked on the water toward Jesus; I've been looking at the piles of stuff all around me that still need to be gone through instead of keeping my eyes fixed on Jesus. I'm not walking on water, but I sure feel like I'm sinking sometimes. Please pray that we can rely on Christ's strength in this and not on our own.

Let us know how we can pray for you!