(originally posted November 28, 2005)

Currently learning: I don’t need all this stuff I have

Today I have been terribly frustrated by things. I carried THREE bags to school today for my various activities throughout the day and things are just getting so awkard. For example, I can never get my purse off when I have it slung over my shoulder, my green 99 cent Kiss Me I’m Irish bag always gets the handles stuck on the emergency break, everything falls out of my purse when I put the brakes on, my umbrella won’t close, my shoes have slid under the gas pedal which=bad. Then I come home and I always have laundry to put away and an endless amount of papers to hole punch and file away and cards and things that i can’t throw away but I don’t have anywhere to put them. It’s stressful. My possessions are stressing me out. This is not the first time I’ve learned this lesson in 24 hours. Let me tell you a tale….

So yesterday, I decided to do laundry for the first time at the Polo Club laundromat instead of my adopted family’s house. I always like to think about what everyone else (who is evil) will do to my stuff while I’m not looking. Here’s a small conversation that God and I had while I was lugging my laundry to the laundry hut:

-God, I think I would be okay if this laundry was taken because I have too much stuff as it is. Hahaha. But that won’t happen….

It only takes an hour and a half. I lug my laundry back up the stairs and dump them out in the livingroom. I get everything folded and then I realize…MY BAG OF UNDERWEAR IS MISSING!!! You see, I usually do laundry at a house where there are boys so I’ve taken to putting my unmentionables in a sweater bag so I won’t strew them about the house after they come out of the dryer. Well, this sweater bag full of underwear was definitely not in my laundry. I know i put it in the washer, but i’m not so sure about the dryer. I went and checked at least three times but to no avail. I even took Joe and Ryan, accompanied by their blades and hatchets, respectively so we could find the great underwear caper. But we didn’t really accomplish anything except Joe scaring the little hispanic woman who was doing her laundry because he had his knife up in the air when she came in. So I’ve decided that it’s gone. Unless some college boy has it in his laundry basket and won’t return it to the laundry hut until he does laundry again in three months. Oh well, who needs underwear anyway?….wait a minute…

Anyway, it’s just God’s way of showing me that I didn’t need all that anyway. I’m going to start weeding through the things that I keep because they make me feel secure. Things, I don’t need you. I can rest easy that God will take care of all my needs.

The Lord giveth (grace, salvation, joy, peace, hope) and the Lord taketh away (bags of underwear). I think I can handle the taketh away part.

(2012 Commentary: After reading the original post, Nanny, my maternal grandmother, graciously sent me a pair of her underwear to replace my lost ones. Sadly, they didn’t fit (my armpits were too low) and so, I turned them into a pillow that sat on my couch until about a year ago when Gracie decided they didn’t fit in with the feng-shui of our living space and ripped them to shreds. I will always mourn the original panty pillows.)