Packing

Since the time we began preparing to move to England four years ago, packing has been a constant theme in my life.  But not just packing for a vacation or short trip.  Packing for me has involved making lots of decisions all at once about every single item in my house.  I've never read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, but I've heard about it, and I feel like I've been through it except for me the categories have been:  give away, sell, store, or pack.  And having to make so many decisions like that in a short amount of time takes a toll on my brain's mental capacity.  Decision-making is not my strong suit.

The first time I went through this process I didn't think it was so bad.  I felt kind of glad for it.  I thought, "Everyone should do this once in their life."  It seemed like a good exercise in letting go of things, holding material possessions loosely.  And it was.  We arrived in England with eight suitcases:  clothes, toys, a few books, my good silverware, notebooks, homeschooling supplies, and snacks.  

When we moved into Capstick Cottage and unpacked our suitcases, the shelves felt bare, the new items I'd bought at IKEA unfamiliar, not really mine.  I learned firsthand what a character in Jan Karon's To Be Where You Are thought about the things that made up her life:  "How could people let go of their old things, when each told a part of their story?  Old things were a literature, a narrative."  In leaving behind most of my things, I felt a little un-moored from my life.  I no longer used the dishes bought for me by the women who surrounded me in my church as I grew up.  I no longer pulled the covers up over my head at night bought on a trip to Target with one of my first friends in Tuscaloosa.  I was no longer surrounded by the books from my childhood, old and dear friends.  Everything was new in my life, both outside the walls of my home and within.

Now, living where we did in England is the best place to live when you're in need of new possessions, pictures and plates and books to turn a house into a home.  Charity shops abound there.  And slowly my walls and bookshelves didn't look so bare anymore.  And with our last move that brought us to France and the smallest place we've ever lived as a family of four, we're surrounded by the new things that make up the newer chapters of our story:  books collected in Whitby and York, curtains bought at Wal-Mart on a trip home and carried across the Atlantic.  

Storage space is limited here so this week we're sorting again.  What do we want to give away?  What do we want to keep but can take back and store at our parents' houses?  We're really thankful our parents have opened up their homes to our possessions we didn't want to part with forever.  Maybe one day we'll part with some of those things, too, but for now, the favorite chair left at my mom's house tells a part of the narrative I don't want to part with yet, the chapter where an engaged 22-year-old me used my paycheck from Wal-Mart to purchase furniture for the home I looked forward to sharing with my soon-to-be husband.  Sometimes our possessions are like the stone Samuel laid called Ebenezer, "Thus far the LORD has helped us."  They call our minds back to times and places, provisions and graces.  And of course, "There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens...a time to plant and a time to uproot...a time to keep and a time to throw away..."  It comforts my heart tremendously to know there is a time for everything.

And now it's time to start school and keep packing.