The results are in! (Long read, but the last one!)

Hello, friends!  Here I am on Tuesday morning after Easter, exhausted from a tense night of listening for tornadoes or the crack of a tree falling during our first potentially damaging storm, and finally ready to make my last post of my Lenten experiment for simplicity.  I have thought about how I would like to finish this run, and I've made a decision.  There are two pretty big items in my life that have been taking up way too much room, and it's time to pull the trigger and send them away. The first one is a stacking washer/dryer combo that Katie's grandma gave us, and the details of the story are worth sharing. ;-) 

Katie, our dear friend Rachel, and I traveled from Abilene to Lufkin (6 hrs) in my single cab old style Dakota (close quarters) to pick up this washer/dryer from her Grandmommy to use in our rental house to try and save space. Long story short, we make it there and back, work hard to get the other appliances moved out to the shed, work hard to squeeze this monster stacked appliance through our 1930's doorways and hall, and get everything set up. A year later, we have to reverse the whole process, haul the rental house's appliances back in and move this big guy BACK to Lufkin where we now live (can you tell I love my wife A LOT?!?!) BUT, our new house's laundry room doesn't have the vertical space for a stacking washer/dryer, so we're using Katie's folks' spare set of appliances and the extra extra-large stacking thing has been looming in our garage ever since. It's high time to get this thing out of our life. As soon as I can clear the items I'm donating away from around it, I'm going to take some pics and list it on craig's list and the Peddler (for you non-Deep-East-Texans, it's a free local  online classifieds and has high traffic!)  But for now, it looks like this:

 My thought at the moment is to sell it and put the money towards some vehicle repair which is long overdue and so far we have not been able to squeeze the funds out of our budget. I know this is different from the rest of my experiment, either donating items or trashing them, but I do plan on asking a more than reasonable price for it to help someone out with a costly purchase, as it is only a few years old and worth quite a bit. Is that good enough? I'm asking myself this question, by the way, not you...  how extravagantly generous can I be?  This is hard...

And speaking of hard, I've saved the biggest, most sacrificial, most significant possession for last. Wait a minute there, Braz Man, that's only two things...you said five. Well, this is pretty big.

That's right, I'm going to get rid of my truck.  For those of you who don't know, this truck and I go way back.  In the summer between my senior year of college and my last semester of school (4 1/2 yrs, not too shabby!) I purchased this used '92 Dodge Dakota.  And when I say I purchased it, I did just that. With saved pottery and necklace money, I went looking around town with a good professor friend of mine who knows cars, found this guy, walked in, negotiated a price, and wrote a check.  If you've never bought something outright that usually requires a payment plan with money you earned with your muscles, sweat, tears, time, blood, and creativity, I highly recommend you try it sometime.  The time span of my ownership of this truck is approximately one month longer than my dating, engagement, and marriage to Katie. Our first kiss was in this truck. In cleaning it out I found birdseed and bobby pins down in the nooks and crannies from driving to our Honeymoon.  We've slept in this truck, fished and camped out of it, traveled to and from dozens of pottery shows including multiple trips to Oklahoma and even one to Clay City, Indiana.  On many of these trips, Katie and I shared the bench seat with our first dog, a tiny little 90lb lapdog named Huckleberry who ran away from home after we moved to Lufkin last June, but who's hair will always remain a part of our lives (and clothes). I always said I'd probably drive this ol' truck until it completely broke down...

Well, it has.  Back in August I left Lufkin to drive to the Metroplex to pick up a bed we had been given. I made it about 25 miles, when the truck began losing power and I pulled over.  The oil pump had stopped working, cutting off oil flow to the engine, and now it has what is called a galled or spun bearing in one of the pistons. This is not an easy or cheap fix, and I've been told it will probably take a new engine to get her up to snuff.  When you're talking about a vehicle this old with 200K miles on it, even though the rest of the truck is in really pretty good shape, getting it fixed will cost way more than the truck is worth. Now, if someone enjoyed tinkering and could get the parts/engine for it and do the labor themselves, that would be a different story, but that's not describing me. 

When I pull back and look at the big picture, though, it's really not that tragic.  I would have needed to get rid of the truck at some point in the near future anyway, because it has no back seat and I wouldn't have been able to transport Avonlea in it for several years, and switching cars with Katie wouldn't have worked because she cannot drive a standard.  Plus, my dear Nana has deemed herself unable to drive anymore due to her aging mind and has gifted me with Buttercup, a hoss of a Crown Victoria with only 60K and only a slight resemblance to a taxi cab.

So, what to do with an old broke-down pickemup truck? I've already priced some of the auto salvage yards around town, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.  Serendipitously, I just happened to look on craig's list for Dodge Dakotas, and there's a guy looking for an early 90's model for parts to restore one he's working on. Hope that pans out. Don't really want to just give away a truck that needs so many repairs to be functional, but might just give someone needing parts a good deal on it, and will most likely use the money, again, to take care of some things around the house. Katie has asked for an anniversary present at the end of the summer in the form of a painted house exterior, so maybe this is God's way of switching some assets around in our life; sell old truck, buy paint for house, and here's a free car to sweeten the pot.

BTW I'm trying to sell the camper shell as well, and it has this sweet custom fishing rod sling system I rigged up to hold about 10 poles close to the ceiling and out of the way of camping gear, ice chests, dogs, etc...

WHAT I'VE LEARNED:  This experiment has been quite the learning experience for me.  When I was first pondering the details of my Lenten regimen, I looked around my house and thought that surely I could get rid of one thing a day and be pretty comfortable. Sure, that would have been 40 things. Easy.  But I didn't want easy.  I wanted to force myself to put my money where my mouth has been at times, saying that life would be so much more enjoyable if lived simply.  So I upped the count to five things a day. Yeah, this will be challenging, maybe even gut wrenching at times! Just extreme enough to make people stop and think, without just going ahead and packing a few bags and living on the streets. Sweet!

Turns out, I could have maybe done ten things a day and still live completely comfortably. Maybe more. I look around and wonder where the big holes should be where 200 items used to live. Turns out they were hiding, not taking up significant amounts of space compared to the whole of the material possessions in my capacity.  Turns out, I'm still a long LONG way from paring my possessions down to 100 measly objects. And it turns out that I'm probably still a long way from trusting God enough to live exactly like Jesus lived and taught, without worry or a pillow to rest my head, giving to everyone who asks of me, giving my coat as well to the man who asks for a shirt, going the extra mile with those who need it.

I still have so much stuff! I probably still have over 200 DVDs alone! And why, with a subscription to Netflix, would I need over 200 DVDs? Because it doesn't hurt anything for me to have over 200 DVDs. And it really doesn't hurt anything for me to have over 200 garments of clothing. And 50 Disc Golf discs. And 400 pots, pans, plates, cups, bowls, utensils,  well over 1000 books, a garage full of fishing equipment, camping equipment, lawn and auto tools, all the gizmos and whatzits for a dozen hobbies I love and don't get to  engage in enough, and literally, countless trinkets and doodads that don't fall into any category other than "Keep it until you find a use for it".  So what if I don't actually NEED all of these things? It's good to have spares. It's good to have extras for when you need em. What if I lose one? What if it breaks? What/who does it really hurt to have all of this stuff?

Me.

"It is time we awaken to the fact that conformity to a sick society is to be sick." - Richard Foster

It seems that the more stuff we have, the more we forget to rely on God for anything.  When we have a job that pays money to provide food and shelter, with lots extra to surround ourselves with "creature comforts" and the ability to purchase on a whim (and especially if we are taken in with the lie of credit cards), what do we need God for except at the end of our long privileged lives to save us from an eternity without Him, even though we've done pretty well for ourselves without Him up to this point...

Lord, forgive me of my arrogance. Forgive me for accepting for myself the glories that the talents and skills You've bestowed on me have reaped instead of sending them up to You. Forgive me when I am more thankful for the creations than the Creator. Forgive me for being a poor steward of Your blessings. Hosanna, save me, and let me remember how much saving I need. Amen.

Thanks to all of you who have walked with and encouraged me through this Lenten journey.  I have definitely felt God's tug on my heart and surgery on my eyes, and I hope that my meager efforts here at striving for simplicity have at least been enlightening to someone out there. There very well might be a sequel next year. We'll see. Until then, may God bless you and grant you

Peace.