Life is full of clutter and junk we do not need, yet we hold onto it. Stress, anger, frustration, hurt, and pain. Why do we hold these things close? I am guilty of holding on to the junk and clutter in my life. Literally and figuratively speaking.
This past weekend my best friend came to help me pack. Thankfully, she is NOT sentimental. I don’t think I can honestly count how many times I heard “Do you REALLY need that? Are you EVER going to use that? That can go in the trash!” I cannot lie I did get a little irritated at times when an item meant something to me, or I thought it meant something to me. I did cave and threw a lot away, but there were some items I did not budge on. I think she just stopped asking and started throwing things away because she knew I would say I needed to keep it for no reason other than it was moms or dads.
Which leads me to wine glasses. How many does one person need? My mom had probably 100 wine glasses and you guessed it, I would not part with them. I swear to you every time we opened another cupboard there were more wine glasses. My friend repeatedly said “Seriously MORE wine glasses? You really do NOT need all these, you don’t even drink wine!” To which I said, “They were moms. I can’t get rid of them!” I did compromise and threw away 10, so now I only have 90. I think they will look nice displayed in the hutch, and if someone comes over and wants to drink wine, I will have options for them.
I try to be practical, but these days practicality has flown out the window. Emotions have set in and I cannot think straight. Every item I see I think, “I can’t throw that away” The reality is I do not need to hold on to everything.
Letting go is hard. No matter what we are going through in life there is something or someone we must “let go” of. There is clutter that needs to get thrown out. Whether it is material items of a loved one that you most certainly will never use, or feelings, something will need to be thrown out for you to move on in life. The more we hold on to the more our minds and hearts lose room for the important things like faith, love, family, and friends.
We need to let go. We do not have complete control of life. We need to have faith that the man upstairs knows what he is doing and let him take over and declutter our hearts and mind. Get rid of the unneeded wine glasses and start fresh.
I am officially asking Jesus to take the wheel of my life, because I know he will guide me in the right direction.
The Light 
The marker message made me laugh! Thank you! Supportive friends are always a good thing
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Yea that message did not make me laugh at that moment. As a matter of fact I told her that box was going in my car just to be safe! 🤣🤣
I’m blessed though to have her in my life. Even when she annoys me she makes me smile.
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I love you and your sentimental gene I really do. Often the road to letting go is long and uphill but you will come out on top!
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I love you more. You and your family are stuck with me forever 😘
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A. It’s hard to let go of our loved one’s things here and there. B. I’m so glad you have a fried to help you through both the physical job of it AND the inner-journey of it. C. I too love the marker message and D. I drink wine, and I love cooking for friends, thus, I can definitively say, overall, unless you are planning in the future to host a dinner party for 50 people (assuming the kitchen staff will wash promptly the dirty glasses brought back to kitchen by waitstaff…) you need only look at the distinctive wine glasses – or the ‘sets’ within, and ‘imbue’ with the saved sets, every memory of your mom & dad and the ‘parties/get togethers’ they held for family, friends, community – that ‘is a physical and tangible’ memory older – – E. Um yeah, over the years as my mom’s rock garden grew and she packed up her ‘rock memory’ keepers for her move to her retirement home and all – I busted my butt to load/haul to my place, buckets of rocks I could lift by myself – why? Free rock and OOH! Look at this one! We picked that up in the pasture after the great storm of…” (Nope, I don’t know what that rock is or when it came to rest on the ‘supply pile’ at her home, BUT I don’t have to BUY rock for my landscaping activities, now – so, I figure, “So what?” F. I also saved rebar and wire construction infrastructure supplies in ‘old piles’ built by my dad – – My brother helped me to transport them the 10 miles to my house and was rather sarcastic over ‘why you NEED this” – but over the years, when I put in gardening infrastructure – I simply CANNOT help sending a pic saying, “Thanks again for hauling this stuff – look what I did in the garden with it!” – – which is, in the end, G. Older sister, sibling rivalry, score on the not quite so rude way of saying, “Told ya so” on me keeping it – – LOL. But seriously? Letting go of tangible, physical reminders is an exercise of reconciling our inner world in grief process and well? To me? You all are working through many years of ‘stuff’ that didn’t get sorted through by you, when your mom died – or when your dad moved, etc., and well – – you are working through your stuff, and your parent’s stuff and well – – cut yourself some slack and every given away/donated/oops! dropped and broke wineglass in the future? Just pat yourself on the back for not taking to your bed for 3 days and move on – You Can DO THIS!
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