there has to be more

As a teenager when I should have been studying about the Revolutionary War or Kinetic Energy, I daydreamed of a grown up life in an eclectic studio apartment in NY. It wasn’t college or cars I cared about, it was the bright flourescent skyline that stretched for miles. I naively planned to pen poetry or write children’s books or pamphlets, whatever paid the bills and afforded me a colorful Bohemian wardrobe.

But life would keep me in the deep south long enough to marry a handsome man who is as steady and solid as he is logical. We would grow a family planted in the soil of responsibility. And we would have one child and then another and then one more. And our lives would soon mimic many by paying bills and serving dinner, smiling at strangers while driving the speed limit in a minivan that seated seven.

We’d soak up Sunday mornings to the last drop. And then do it again on Sunday nights and Wednesdays and usually one more time for this or that during the week.

And life has been good. Yes, we’ve outgrown our home and there is a drip in the basement, but we are well and the years have been kinder than we deserve.

But in this collection of marriage we have acquired an abundance of stuff. Shiny and pretty, polished and protected high on a shelf, we’ve filled our home full of things. And by day they look a little less attractive and a little more selfish. And slowly fading was our pursuit of newer and better. We had begun to feel sick of the littered life of consumption.  

“But then I realize there is never going to be a day when I stand before God and He looks at me and says, ‘I wish you would have kept more for yourself.’ I’m confident that God will take care of me.”
― David Platt, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream

And in this backwards way of living that appeared to be pressing us forward, what seemed as extreme as packing up and living in a loud city with glowing skyscrapers, there was a change beginning in our family.  A change that was moving us to a place we’d never been before.

To be continued Wednesday and Friday …

 

Linking up this week with Michelle at Graceful & Jen at Finding Heaven

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