{Glorious to Behold}

"It is glorious to behold this ribbon of water sparkling in the sun, the bare face of the pond full of glee and youth, as if it spoke the joy of the fishes within it, and of the sands on its shore--such is the contrast between winter and spring. Walden was dead and is alive again."


Just enjoying this glorious weather--took a drive to the edge of Teton National Forest and basked in the beauty and bounty of the oncoming Spring.

{A Tolerable Planet}

"What's the use of a fine house, if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"

Just a warning in advance. I'm going to get up on my soap box for a minute...I'm dragging it over now...setting it in place...ah, yes, here I am standing atop it.

I'm so tired--so tired--of hearing people say that global warming is a lie...and frankly, that belief seems to be most prevalent among the religious right. And THAT is the part that I find hardest to swallow. Of all people, those who recognize the Earth as a precious, remarkable, beautiful gift from God should be the ones who are most desirous to take care of it. Instead, we attack those who try to encourage others to care for the environment by saying they operate behind the "lie of global warming". To me, global warming seems like a moot point. Regardless of whether or not global warming is a real issue, my inner hippie--the part that loves Thoreau, and the part that marvels daily over the remarkable diversity and beauty of God's creations--hopes to care for this planet.

Not so very long ago in a church meeting, the discussion led the Sunday School class to Doctrine and Covenants 104: 13, 16-18.

It reads:
"For it is expedient that I, the Lord, should make every man accountable, as a steward over earthly blessings, which I have made and prepared for my creatures.

"But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold, this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low.

"For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare [...]

"Therefore, if any man shall take of the abundance which I have made and impart not his portion according to the law of my gospel, unto the poor and the needy, he shall, with the wicked, lift up his eyes in hell, being in torment."

After reading that passage, someone went all Fox News on us and said, "See? This just proves that global warming isn't real at all." I almost passed out. Let me repeat...whether or not global warming exists is not the issue. Taking care of God's beautiful creation--the creation that will ultimately be glorified into the celestial kingdom--is the issue.

I'm obviously talking the Gospel according to Myself here, but it seems to me that if we are appointed stewards over the earth, we are charged with the CARE of the earth. Just as we are made stewards over our children to care for and protect them, we are given that same responsibility over the planet. And yes, the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, did create a world of plenty, but that plenty must be stewarded over in HIS way--giving to the needy and providing for the care of all. But rather than face up to that, we drink our Fiji Water, we buy cheaply made-in-sweatshops Chinese products from WalMart, drive our enormous, gas-guzzling SUVs, and dump our plastic waste on the ground to kill off other animals.

It really isn't that hard to be a little better. There are so many small things we can do to make at least a small difference. Maybe we won't change the world on our own, but I do believe that changing behavior can also change attitudes. If we become more aware and thoughtful of our actions, small steps can turn into great strides...and maybe someday I'll finally get to live on a little farm milking goats and collecting chicken eggs. We're not there yet, but some of the things we have integrated (though not always perfectly) are:
*cloth diapering our kids
*recycling
*gardening
*using re-usable water bottles
*taking re-usable grocery bags to the store
*switching CFL lightbulbs
*washing clothes in cold water
*shorter showers
*buying American Made whenever we can find it
*buying or making handmade gifts instead of store bought items
*cutting back on fast food
*buying used for anything we can (kids items, cars, clothing, etc)

Truthfully, all these things are actually better for our pocketbooks and our health, so they are worth doing in more than just the spiritual sense.

Let me now add here, I am NOT perfect. My friends and family can attest to that. I think that my own struggle with consumerism is part of the problem. By buying and buying, I simply create more waste; that fact is a major reason behind my desire to change and the metamorphosis our family has been going through. There are small things I forget to do (like remembering my re-usable grocery bags). There are bigger things I just can't bring myself to add to our lives (like family cloth). But like Thoreau, I would rather have a modest home in a world where I can appreciate God's grandeur than a mansion on a desecrated planet.

Ok....climbing off my soap box now...sliding it back into it's corner....go about your business people, nothing to see here...


I've shared this before, but hey...have you seen this video yet?

"How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book."

Obviously, I'm a big Thoreau fan. And just as clearly, his words have made a powerful impression upon this reader. However, this post is not {exactly} about Thoreau...rather it is a gift I received from a friend at the start of this journey. And my apologies, because this post is a long time coming.

I am blessed to have the friendship and support of a group of women I came into contact with in an online forum. Originally, we started out trying to learn a little something on a somewhat unusual subject--cloth diapers. But our common interest was seeded in other, more meaningful commonalities--love for family, love of learning, respect for others and for the world in which we live. As such, the support from that group of women expanded far beyond the covering of our children's tushies, and I feel privileged to call many of these women my friends.

Indeed, one of these friends yet again demonstrated that love when she sent me an incredibly thoughtful gift as we began our attempts to simplify our lives. As a surprise one day, I arrived at the mailbox to see a package waiting for me, and what was inside, but one of the most wonderful children's books I had ever had the pleasure to read! The book, Henry Builds a Cabin is based on Thoreau's time at Walden Pond. It is filled with unique illustrations and tells the story, simply and clearly, without sacrificing its profundity. I was filled with gratitude and sentimentality when I first read it, and continue to be so each time I peruse it again. So, Helene, THANK YOU.

AND...if you'd like to see a few pages of Henry Builds a Cabin, you can see it right here. Or check it out from your local library and read it to your children {or yourself!}.

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you've imagined."

This is perhaps the best Thoreau-ism of all time. It speaks to me louder than any other tidbit the man wrote in Walden (and believe me, there are gazillions). In fact, I have, since visiting Walden Pond at age 19, kept a framed version of those words in my home.

And yet...
               and yet...

My husband and I, we hadn't been living the life we imagined.

The Mister and I are sometimes referred to as optimists, hippies, free-spirits, etc. All of these words in some way or another really just mean that we are dreamers, at least to a degree. We imagine a better life for our family, a better world in general, an unconventional style of living for ourselves. For one reason or another though, we have always had a tendency to simply go with the flow. This hasn't always been a bad thing--we have been presented with many wonderful opportunities and have lived a happy and comfortable life. We have a joyful marriage, delightful children, and a peaceful home. However, in spite of all this, we weren't living the life we imagined. And we were sort of circling around our dreams, not walking confidently toward them. An opportunity would arise, and providing it made sense, we'd take it.

Turns out, we're kind of chicken.

For several years now, I have been teaching high school. And although it is a job I enjoy, and a job which I know I am very good at, my heart wasn't totally in it. After I had my daughter, this became even more apparent, and through my pregnancy with my son, I knew that what I really wanted was to simply be a mom to my children. At the end of the last school year, that opportunity became a reality. Originally, the choice had been made for me--like many of the choices we had fallen into over the years. My position was no longer available, and it seemed to make sense. However, as more positions opened in my district and I was being offered them, the idea of staying home became more and more difficult to wrestle with. I was no longer forced out of my position; I had to make a choice. Ultimately, we decided that we would somehow make ends meet, and followed the very strong spiritual promptings that I should leave teaching. It was one of the first real "leaps" we had taken in our marriage--a first, confident step in the direction of our dreams, and the catalyst for the pathway that opened up for us.

Over this past summer, we received a major shock. My husband's own teaching position--a position which had literally fallen into his lap--was in serious jeopardy. He had been teaching woodshop at the high school level for the last few years. And while he enjoyed it greatly, he had originally taken the job in hopes that it would open up his schedule a bit more, allowing him to finish his own college degree. However, what we really ended up doing was enrolling him in a lot of classes to keep up with his teaching requirements, which hardly pertain to what he really wants to be when he "grows up." At any rate, at the end of summer, it became very apparent that the work he had put into maintaining his teaching certificate may have turned out to be in vain. We were, quite simply, put into a tailspin as our sense of security, our ability to provide for our children, and our general complacency went out the window.

We struggled through those few days. We wondered why, in His infinite wisdom, the Lord would have prompted us so strongly for me to leave my teaching position, if this was coming down the pipe. We wondered why He prompted us so strongly to push my husband through a series of summer courses for his teaching certificate that were intense--academically and financially--if there would be no job for him to use them. Finally, once the shock began to wear off, we got down to business and started addressing the situation. We turned to the Lord and quit asking "Why did this happen?" and started asking "Where do we go from here?"

We started looking for jobs (hard to come by for teachers at the end of summer) and exploring options. We asked ourselves the questions that really matter--what do we want most?--and came up with nearly identical answers--space for our kids, simplicity, nature, and for my husband to finally be done with school. We realized the things we wanted most, were things we didn't have.

The idea of my husband going back to school came up, and while it seemed crazy--to pick up our kids, sell everything we owned, and go back to the poor student lifestyle--it became apparent that this was precisely the opportunity we had been given. The Lord, in His infinite wisdom, had given us a chance to really make our choice--not to fall into something, but to make a choice. We realized that my husband could continue to pursue teaching--something he enjoyed, but wasn't his dream--, or he could go back to school and live the life we imagined. And we KNEW that whichever choice we made, things would start to fall into place, because both were equally worthy in they eyes of the Lord.

Once we chose to send my husband back to school, miracles began to happen. The night we decided, we both came up with the name of the same university--a place neither of us had ever given much thought to. That night, I found a job posting at the university that fit my skills perfectly--it would also provide free housing and income. Those summer classes he had taken for his teaching certificate? They put him over the edge to qualify for a full-tuition scholarship, thanks to his perfect grades. The impending move let us start letting go of the things we thought we needed--we were finally starting to kick the consumer habit. He was able to keep his teaching position through December, accepted to the University for January; I got the job (hooray for a place to live and income); some dear friends approached us about renting the home we own in Arizona.

The list of blessings goes on, but suffice it to say, once we started asking the Lord the right questions, the "why" became apparent. Here was an event, originally seen as disaster, that instead turned out to be a miraculous gift. He knew the desires of our heart--He knew of the life we had been imagining. And all He wanted to do was give us the confidence to head that direction.

"If you give money, spend yourself with it..."

Oh. The holidays.

I should say that I LOVE the holidays. I love the purpose, the traditions, the spirit of it all. But like many Americans, I sometimes fall prey to the trappings of consumerism so neatly laid out for me.

As a kid, our holidays were the usual display of gross excesses.

So. much. STUFF.

As an adult, I am trying to eliminate that, to build my children's memories on activities and traditions, not stuff. Last year, my husband and I signed the handmade pledge. It was really amazing. Everything we gave to our children, friends or family was made by us, or bought from an artisan. I was completely and utterly surprised at how many beautiful, thoughtful and unique gifts we were able to give! It was the perfect system shock that we needed to help us remember what Christmas is REALLY about.

I figure as we get older, and our kids get older, the handmade pledge will be harder and harder to carry out. After all, I have a limited amount of talent at craftiness, and as much as I love etsy.com, it isn't long before you start to cross over into the land of the creepy craft over there. So, our compromise was to incorporate the handmade pledge into every Christmas.

We've decided, that in order to keep the consumerism to a minimum (and our gift buying careful and thoughtful), we would limit gifts to the kids to three each, to represent the three gifts brought by the wisemen to the baby Jesus. AND that one of those three gifts would be handmade. I am currently working on blankets for the kids....I was hoping to have them finished by this Christmas...maybe by the time they graduate high school will be a little more reasonable.  At any rate, we WILL be doing handmade for at least one of our kids three gifts. And honestly, if you haven't tried the handmade pledge, go for it! It's awesome and inspiring!

More on Christmas (and toys!) in a few days...

"The world is but a canvas to our imagination."

My daughter has a LOT of toys. A lot. A whole heaping mess of toys.

She doesn't play with them.

One thing I have noticed in the weeks away from home is how few of her toys she is actually all that interested in. At home, she would dig through her toy boxes aimlessly, trying to sort out the mess. Here, she mostly spends her time outside, or when she is indoors, in pretend play. One Little People set, a few stuffed animals, and some of her little brother's clothing serve to keep her quite busy most of the day. The one thing I know she misses is her kitchen stuff--play food and tea set and pots and pans. Sometimes she tells me she needs to go home and get it. I know there is a good chance it will get lost here, just like it always seemed to be lost in the tangled mess in our home, so I am leaving it tucked away until we finish clearing out all the stuff she doesn't miss. But aside from her pretend food, she doesn't care one bit about what has been left behind.
She plays all. day. long. She stays busy doing a million different things, and most of those things don't require games or toys at all.

It makes me wonder when I stopped giving her the chance to just explore. I wonder when the toys became overwhelming for her. I can clearly picture her, sitting in her toy room, looking perplexed. I used to think she was bored with the toys she had, thought maybe I ought to get her some more. It turns out, I think she was actually just perplexed about what to do with all that STUFF. Sounds familiar, no?

It makes me wonder when my own imagination died. If I wrack my brain, I can only think, at best, of two or three toys that I played with as a kid, and those two or three were toys I really loved. The rest of my childhood is full of pretend games, active games, forts, reading, drawing, creating. I wonder when I decided that I needed stuff to fill my time and attention, when flashing lights and whirling gizmos took the place of a good old book, an invisible tea party, or just making something with my hands.

And I wonder how on earth did this world actually manage to get me to start passing that on to my kids? I'm so grateful that every day is a new one.

"There are such words as joy and sorrow."

I have beautiful children. Really, I know all moms say that, but I can't help it. They're beautiful. They are the joy of my heart and the light to my day.

(I told you...beautiful!)

When my daughter, now 2 and almost a half, was born, I remember sitting for hours, just staring at each other. Day after day was filled with this most mundane, but delightful of activities. Many times while we sat and stared at each other, I would take picture after picture of her many expressions. I have picture and video of everything she did from the beginning--oodles of digital and real space brimming over with photo-documentaries of my first born.

Then along came the New Guy. I always promised myself that I wouldn't ever let my child suffer from "Second Child Syndrome"--that curious lack of photographs of the second child. Obviously, I would love them both equally and each moment would be as important to me with him as with my daughter. We did great at the hospital--got lots of photos of him, even more than we had of my daughter. And for the first couple of months, we did pretty well too. We sat and stared at each other (when big sister would let us). I worked on catching his first smiles. But things are busier when you have a toddler as well as a newborn...and then the clutter began to take over again.

I had a serious nesting phase before each of my children were born, and with my second, I eliminated a lot of clutter and STUFF before he came because I felt like we definitely needed to "make room" for the new addition. However, just a few months after he was born, the house started to fill again, and I, caught up in this new world of two children, was letting things slide. I found myself doing something that I now think of as unforgivable...something I only just realized I had been doing. I was skipping over memories because I was too ashamed of the STUFF.

As I look through the photos I have of my children, I realize that my son does indeed suffer from Second Child Syndrome. There are very few photos of him, at least in comparison to his older sister. I used to think that it had more to do with how busy I was, or the fact that I didn't notice the milestones as much with him, since she had already been through them.  As I look back, though, I realize that isn't the case. I also started to notice a sharp decline in the number of recent pictures of my daughter. I can look back and think of all the times--many times, too many times--that one of my children in the past few months has done something adorable, or picked up a funny habit, or hit a new milestone, and instead of grabbing the camera to record it, I have thought to myself, "Ugh...this house is too big a mess. I'll get a video of this once I get it cleaned up." It turns out, I just let a lot of precious memories slide. The piles of books stayed piled up, the too-much furniture stayed in the house, the baskets designed to organize just filled with more STUFF.

All these things I bought, I see now, out of pride. Magazines, television, they told me I needed things to be a better person--to look better to those around me. Unfortunately, all those things did was make me ashamed of my own home, of my gross excesses, of my inability to reign it in. Now I've sold and tossed and donated most of the stuff that was once in my home...and the only things I want back are the memories of my children that I let slip away in exchange for all the garbage around me.

Sorrow for lost joy.

"Before we can adorn our houses with beautiful objects..."

"...the walls must be stripped, and our lives must be stripped, and beautiful housekeeping and beautiful living laid for a foundation."

A fascinating thing has begun to occur since I have been out of my home. It is becoming beautiful again.

In the last several months, my husband and I have started to loathe our home. We talk about how small it is, how much we have outgrown it, the lack of storage space, the amount of STUFF in it; we have even (entirely in jest, I assure you) discussed burning it to the ground in various manners.  For a while, I really thought it was the house, that it really was too small. But as time has passed and I grew closer and closer to the pinnacle of frustration that set me off, I realized it is not so much the house, but all the stuff in it that I was hating. It is not unreasonable for a family of four to manage living in a two bedroom home. People do it all over the world. Indeed, in some places the amount of space we have would be down right luxurious. The fault lay not in our home, but in us.

I'm back to our home pretty much daily, sorting through things, packing, grabbing an item here and there. And when I enter lately, I am sometimes simultaneously pleased and saddened to note that we really do own a sweet and lovely little home. Without all the clutter and chaos, it suddenly takes on the look I fell in love with in the beginning. It is well laid out, feels larger than its size, and has a certain charm to it that is coming out of hiding. In fact, the hubby and I were sitting in the living room today, after spending a couple of hours boxing things and vaccuming (just for your information...it is unwise to purchase a home with black carpet when you have two light-haired pugs who shed prolifically...), and we looked around, and I felt peaceful--really peaceful--in my home, now devoid of an incredible amount of STUFF, as well as much of the furniture. Who knew? Here I was, all this time thinking that I needed more space, more storage solutions, a professional organizer, when all I really needed was to take a deep breath and let go...and I don't even have to burn down my cute little house to do it. :)

"What demon possessed me that I behaved so well?"

I love--LOVE--this Thoreau-ism. 

One of the things that upsets me most about how things are right now for us--the overwhelming amount of clutter in our home, the lack of peace I feel because of the chaos around us--is that it isn't what I wanted. It has never been what I wanted. I have always wanted a clean home, a simple home, a sanctuary from the outside world. Instead, my home is a reminder of the fast-paced world drenched in consumerism. It is filled with stuff, most of which I don't even care about, much less need. I feel like the busy Concordians Thoreau observed--I have been possessed my some demon, and it has caused me to behave well according to the ways of the world.

It's interesting to me, really, that someone like me, who by many standards lives a pretty virtuous life, has bought in, so whole-heartedly, to a system of ideals that is very far from the religion which I love. Search the doctrine of Mormonism, or Christianity at large, and there is nothing instructing us to seek to obtain more or fill the emptiness we feel with items. Quite the contrary, we should be laying up treasures in heaven and seeking to place Christ at the center of our homes and hearts. Shamefully, there have been times when I have received bad news, or had a rough day, I have turned to "retail therapy" or internet window shopping, rather than turning to the Lord to seek counsel and peace. I have been following the advice of the world; I obeyed when the world told me I needed more, or needed something new, or needed something better than what someone else had.

I'm discouraged today. We went through our home this past weekend and really pulled out so. much. STUFF. We had another massive garage sale. We sorted things into piles of keep, sell, donate, trash. We hauled a truckload to a drop-off donation. And there is still so much left. There are mountains of STUFF in my home. I don't know how I got here...

I am ashamed that I wasted time in a job I didn't love, money on things I didn't need, and energy on thoughts that failed to give me comfort, all because I was possessed by this demon called "consumerism."

"I went into the woods because I wished to live deliberately..."

"...to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

In July of 1845, Henry David Thoreau moved into his self-built one room cabin to begin his experiment in simplicity, Many thought that Thoreau was taking a tremendous step backward in doing so, leaving behind the comforts and conveniences of life at the time, but it was through the experiment that Thoreau was really able to live his Transcendental ideals. Thoreau is the father of American conservationism, a philospher, a naturalist--and all of these roles came to him largely because of the voice he found in his time at Walden.

Well, we too are now embarking on a little experiment of our own. It may seem like a big step backward, but we hope it will give us the perspective we need to find the right way to do things--we are sort of hitting the reset button on our lives. Today, we moved back in with my parents. Yep, a couple of twenty-somethings with two kids and we are back in with mom and dad for the next few weeks. There are some other reasons for this, but suffice it to say that we needed the distance from our own home to decide what stuff we need, and what stuff we need to let go of.

Today we packed up the things that we knew were absolute necessities to get us through the next weeks--beds, clothes, toiletries, etc, and we moved into my parents' guest room. We have been planning this for a couple of months, but when we walked into our home today with the real intent of only taking our most basic necessities, I was surprised at how much our perspective had already changed. It's remarkable what can happen when you get a new perspective; it really is like getting a fresh pair of eyes.  As we moved from room to room, gathering essentials, it was almost surreal to move among the many piles and boxes of stored up junk, knowing that we would be leaving them behind--and even more, it didn't bother me one bit.

Last night, after the babies were safely tucked away in bed at my parents' house, my husband and I went home to start separating out the junk. We decided it would be best to tackle one room at a time, moving from one side to the other and sorting things into three piles: toss, keep, and sell/donate. We managed to get the living room done--all 15x12 feet of it. And we hauled away 4 bags of garbage--four industrial sized bags of garbage. I don't even know how that happens. I don't even know where it all came from. But I know that I am OVER it. I know that every bag of trash thrown out, or every box of items to donate, lifts a weight off my shoulders I didn't even know was there. We still have a long way to go (and another huge yard sale coming up, if you need anything...), but we are slowly plodding along.

I took some pictures yesterday. My husband, who generally tends to shy away from influencing the blog in anyway said sharply as I was doing so, "You better not stick these on the internet." We'll see if I get brave enough. But either way, I will keep them and they will serve as a reminder to me to NEVER get back to this place again.

So, just as Thoreau required separation to live out his life in the order he craved, we are doing the same. I find his statement fits us in just the same way: We went back home because we wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if we could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when we came to die, discover that we had not lived.

What Thoreau Didn't Know

Thoreau was brilliant. He was progressive. He had foresight that few men have ever possessed. But there is one thing he got wrong. I've been reading a couple of biographies about Thoreau, and for all his brilliance and desire to live deliberately, he missed something--took it just a step too far. Thoreau perfected the art of bachelorhood; he never took a bride and never knew the joy of offspring. He valued his parents--returning after his experiment at Walden to their home and working for his father's pencil-making company--but never had one of his own. And here, I think, is where he missed the mark. For all his talk of breathing deeply the air of one's own life, he missed out on the one thing that makes me stop most days and really absorb the beauty of my life.

With that discovery, I have decided to devote Wednesdays to what Thoreau didn't know. Each Wednesday, I'll share the joy in the little moments of family life--the moments that speak to our hearts the "inexpressible delirium of joy".  Please join me by sharing a few moments from the past week--moments with spouses and children--that Thoreau just wouldn't understand. Share them here in a comment, or link to your own blog or twitter page!

What Thoreau Didn't Know--
Thoreau didn't know about the kind of laughter the love of your life can elicit, even after 6 years of marriage.

Thoreau didn't know that two year olds will eat fists full of powdered sugar when given the right opportunity.

He didn't know that an 8 month old will make a beeline for his sister's high chair every. single. time. she sits in it to eat. Or about the hilarity that ensues as you try to pry his fingers off of it, one by one, amidst great exclamations from both.

Thoreau didn't know that sleepless nights often lead to afternoon naps with sweet baby sighs in your ear.

He wouldn't understand why the best birthday in my memory consisted of a movie with my husband and homemade cake with my children.

He didn't know about the "delirium of joy" that comes from the thousand little accomplishments that happen every day: the little man taking a step on his own, my daughter actually sharing a toy on her own with her brother (finally!), climbing ladders and sliding down slides at the park, and always the sweet smiles that come to me for no other reason than the wondrous fact that I am their mother.

"Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me."

I woke up this morning feeling much better than when I went to bed last night. Sleep is like that, you know. Some whirring mechanism of peace takes our pains and puts them into perspective, relating them to other events, stories and literature we have encountered. This morning, I woke and walked into my daughter's room, saw the pile of clothes to be discarded, and rather than anger or sadness, there was peace. (Again, the hardest part is the decision to let it go.) The dawn in me this morning came in the form of a story that popped into my mind as I looked upon the wreckage of yesterday's emotional crisis.

When I was seven or eight years old, I was traveling home from a friend's house on some ridiculous 90s contraption that consisted of a triangle seat, 3 tiny wheels, and a set of handlebars. As I rolled over a crack in the sidewalk, the tiny front wheel caught, and the seat launched me, face first, into the concrete. I barely made it home for the nausea, and for years, the splattered drops of blood that poured from my nose onto the sidewalk remained visible. (I remember looking for them each day on my walk home from the bus stop.) Many years later, I would look back and realize that I had most likely broken my nose rather badly, but at the time, I lacked the perspective to recognize the injury for what it was.

From that time until I was 16 years old, I was frequently ill with chronic sinus problems. Often, I would experience a separate sinus infection every 2-3 weeks. I probably spent half my teen years on prescription antibiotics. Finally, after 2 weeks out of school for a sinus infection that had spread to my tonsils and my throat (and after being told by an orthodontist that braces would do me no good if I didn't fix my breathing issues), I saw an ENT and made the decision to undergo a septoplasty--a surgery to repair my very deviated septum.

Modern septoplasties tend to go very well. Mine did not. As it turns out, my nose was substantially worse than my doctor had anticipated, and he ended up re-breaking my nose in two places. It was the only course of action he had to straighten things out and finally give me a chance to breathe. For weeks, I was swollen and bruised. I had one black eye, and a nose twice the size of normal. My face was a bloated, weepy mess of tenderized meat. What's more, when the swelling finally came down and the splints were removed, I had an entirely different centerpiece to my face, one that is certainly not aligned to any standards of traditional beauty. I often jokingly refer to my surgery as my "nose job" because I enjoy seeing the reactions of people as they wonder how awful my schnoz must have been before, for me to pay to have it look like it does now. Beyond the weeks of bruising and the more prominent proboscis, I also suffered years of increased sensitivity. Thanks to my clumsiness (demonstrated by the original incident causing the nasal mishap), I often experienced intense, shocking pain to my face from any number of small accidents that would never have bothered me previously.  However, in spite of this somewhat unsettling change, one remarkable difference was all that mattered: I could breathe. The infections stopped, I slept more soundly, and I spent more time being myself, unencumbered by the fatigue that had long accompanied me. Perhaps most importantly, I have learned to love my face, even if it isn't the one I had always expected to have. I can look in the mirror and see beauty outside of what the magazines tell me the boundary is.

This morning, I realized that I am journeying through a similar, though more emotional, exercise. Somewhere along the way, my sense of what I need has become "broken." I ran face first into the lies society has been serving me, and though there have been signs and symptoms showing me that I was not well, I never recognized them for what they were until I was too sick to even breathe.

Now, slowly, I am breaking things back down. A simple attempt to clear out my home has revealed that things are far worse than I could have anticipated. This, in many places along the road, may be more painful than I thought. And the result will not conform to what society deems worthy of its praises. My life will not be beautiful to outsiders who have no knowledge of the life before. In fact, even after this transformation, I imagine there will be accidents, steps backward and shocks of pain as I struggle to heal the severed ties to my previous ideals. But to me, there will be that one great accomplishment: I will be able to breathe. I will be able to look around my home and see peace and space and freedom from my belongings.

And it will be beautiful, even if I'm the only one who sees it that way.

"Simplify, simplify."

Well, I cried today. Those who know me know that this is a rare occasion indeed.

Today, I went through my children's outgrown clothing. This was especially difficult considering the fact that just a short time ago, I had gone through my babies' things and had pared it down to what I thought was a reasonable amount. Yet, the drawers still spilled over, things vanished in the mass, and I could not find some items for the chaos. So I pushed on and tried again--compelled to eliminate these tiny tumors of cloth and thread from my new world of simplicity. It took a long time, and it was HARD. Every little piece of clothing was so closely tied to a sweet image in my mind of one of my children at an age and a stage of development that I will never again witness that it felt as though I was throwing those perfect film reels of memory out as well. I wept over a little car-covered Hawaiian shirt, a polka dot Easter dress, a cow-print jacket, a pair of dinosaur socks, a single tiny blue shoe made from an old sweater, the list goes on....

I chanted my mantra of "Simplify, simplify." I reminded myself of the environment I was cultivating; I told myself they were just things, that the memories themselves weren't tied to them; I thought of how Thoreau could flippantly toss his beautiful rocks out the window. And you know what? None of it made me feel any better. And I'm mad at stupid H.D. tonight, too.

Thoreau threw his lovely chunks of limestone out the window, and then he got to walk by those three hunks of stone every day on his morning and evening walks--so at least four times a day, even if that was all he left the house for. He could watch them gathering moss; he could stack them into a little rock snowman; he could see the birds perch upon them. And even then, they were rocks and nothing more. When I expel these sweet garments, they will be gone from me forever. Tonight I am angry at Thoreau for his lack of sentimentality, and the implication that we should all be as equally unsentimental. He had nothing to be sentimental about. He never understood the simultaneous joy and grief a mother feels at watching her children grow and learn and improve, witnessing moments as static as quicksilver slipping through her fingers. He never put a baby to bed in a pair of pajamas one night, only to find that the legs can no longer fit by morning. He didn't see the speed at which my children, my precious children, are steadily marching toward independence.....

And yet, I did it. I kept so little that it almost makes me sick to think about it: the outfits I brought them home in, their blessing clothing, heirloom pieces made by my mother, their first Sunday clothes. That's it. That's the list. The strange thing is that now, even though it hurts, they feel more special. It feels like these little articles of clothing are finally getting the attention they deserve. They aren't crammed into a drawer with hundreds of other pieces of clothing. I know where they are, and because I have cleared away the things that are far less important, I am able to treat these items--items I will pass on to my children's children--with more tender care.

Thoreau wrote, "Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them." I have nothing to show for my memories. Nothing about which to say, "Look, my kid was darling in this sweater." I do, however, have that indelible impression. I carry with me the constant reminder of my children and the stages they have grown through. Every time I look into their faces, I see the film reel playback of smiles and tears and laughter and triumphs that is being added to every minute I experience them in my lives.

So it was that tonight I shed a few tears. I held the little rags to my face and inhaled the sweetness of each piece, a little poem unto itself. I carefully retraced those indelible marks on my memory, and I set them free.

In my afternoon walk...

"In my afternoon walk I would fain forget all my morning occupations and my obligations to society."

If you've ever visited Arizona anywhere in the months of, oh, January through December, you may know that on a walk is one of the last places you might like to be in the afternoon. However, as the weather has started to drop to just 2 digits, I have made the effort to take my children out for an afternoon walk each day so that they may witness and experience the little patch of nature that is around us. It isn't much--just a few scattered trees among parking lot spaces and green areas between houses--but nature is nature and it's good for the soul.

We get our feet in the grass...

We lay on our backs...

...and look at the sky...

...and the occasional skeptic...

...and ride off into the sunset.

And H.D. is right. We walk out the door and leave our worries behind.

"Simplify, simplify."

In Walden, Thoreau shares an episode he has with three rocks. He explains that he had collected three pieces of limestone and placed them decoratively on his desk, but later "was much terrified to find that they required to be dusted daily." At this discovery, rather than allow the rocks to begin to own him by requiring his time, energy and space, good ol' H.D. tossed them out the window.

I have heard tell of a television show on A&E called Hoarders. I have seen bits and pieces of the show, but cannot bring myself to watch an entire episode for one simple reason--it hits too close to home. Granted, I know that, primarily, people hoard due to mental illness, which, thankfully, I do not have. However, I think many Americans can recognize themselves in, or at least sympathize with, the compulsions shown on Hoarders. Their lives have slowly slipped away as piles and piles of STUFF have steadily been suffocating their freedom. They are oppressed by their possessions. The pursuit of STUFF has turned on them until they have become powerless to overcome the compulsion to hang onto things of nothing more than perceived value. Do we not all sometimes feel a bit burdened by the weight of our possessions and the cost it is to own them?

Do not suppose I am a hoarder. But do not suppose I am so very far off. After all, what is the difference between those who hoard, and those who live amongst an acceptable amount of clutter? It is often as simple as the passage of time and the struggles of life--loss of a loved one, or a job; a bout with depression; loneliness; retirement; empty nest syndrome; the list goes on. I think (wishful thinking, perhaps?) that there are many Americans out there like me, who live on the brink--who live just one disaster away from handing their complete happiness over to their possessions, from letting STUFF take over their lives. After all, as Americans, we have had the "value" of consumerism etched into our minds since birth. In America, consumerism and patriotism stroll down the lane of our ideals hand in hand.

In the spirit of H.D., this post will serve as the first of what I hope will be many that will chronicle the metaphorical hunks of limestone of which we are ridding ourselves. The gross excess you will find in these posts may horrify you. Or perhaps, they will hit a little close to home. I think perhaps you will be shocked by what you will see. But I also think for some, you may recognize a bit of yourself. "Simplify, simplify," is my new motto and will be used to signify my attempts to purge the STUFF that has been pushing in the boundaries of my freedom.

I have been conspicuously absent from the blog. I've been very busy. You see, in an effort to "simplify, simplify" we have been preparing for the yard sale of the century. Originally, the concept was that we would have plenty of time to purge the house, as well as the storage unit, to prepare for the sale. This proved entirely impossible, and we succeeded only in purging the storage unit. Please keep in mind that the storage unit contains only things that have NEVER been used in our small home. In this area were items that we either had no place for when we moved to Arizona, or are things which we have accumulated over the years here and never had an opportunity to even use. We spent a great deal of time sorting items, and eventually filled 3 truckloads and an entire 5 foot by 10 foot trailer completely full. Of our stuff. That hadn't been used in years, if at all. There was no one to blame for the orgy of consumerism laid out before us as we readied for our yard sale. No one but us to point a finger at when all the items lay out on display.

Below, you will find a couple pictures of the carnage, which was difficult to photograph accurately on account of its sheer volume (and yes, every item you see belonged to us, and had been sitting unused while we continued to fill our home with more useless things):

Amazingly, we managed to let many items go. Most remarkably, my husband set all his tools free--which had been trapped, useless, in a storage facility since our move. I managed to rid ourselves of a ridiculous amount of Christmas decorations, baby items, household items and a few sentimental things, which, when scrutinized under my new motto, I realized weren't sentimental at all. It was all just STUFF. The most difficult task, in spite of the hours and hours of heavy lifting and organizing and sitting in the sun, was actually just the mental disconnect from our belongings; the hardest part was deciding to let things go and not turn back.

And I must add, as we pulled away from the storage unit with an enormous load of junk, aside from the obvious horror at what we had amassed, there was the unmistakable feel of a tremendous burden being lifted from off our shoulders. It felt good to be liberated from all these things and to know that it was just the beginning. I wish to share that liberation with you, reader (if there be any), so a challenge: Find something and set yourself free from it. Look around you and see the "limestones" in your home that do nothing more than drain your resources and toss something out the window--give it to a neighbor, donate it, sell it, recycle it, or just put it in the garbage. There...doesn't that feel better? (Be sure to leave a comment sharing what you tossed!)

"Some of you, we all know, are poor."

"[You] find it hard to live, are sometimes as it were, gasping for breath. I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour."

Ouch, when he puts it like that. Yeah...we're working on this too. And interestingly, I think the knowledge that I would be staying home is helping us with that. Change the priorities, change the outcome. Relearn what you thought you already knew.

What I love about Thoreau is that he just says it how it is. Debt doesn't make us any wealthier. It just means we'll be working that much closer to the grave.

By the way, today's post is short to give you time to watch this. It is one of the catalysts for this blog. It is eye-opening, to say the least, and well-worth the 20 minutes. Pass it on if you can.

"Shall we always study to obtain more of these things...

...and not sometimes to be content with less?"

Forgive me my ramblings, dear reader, in these next days. The song, though escaping the inner recesses of the soul, is still searching for the words and the tune that go together. There is, in every attempt to eradicate a problem, first the need to recognize it. There are many, nay, infinite, areas of my life which need a little recognition and sprucing up; I anticipate the next several days will be spent in laying my inadequacies wide open for the world so that I may better address them.

The hubs and I have recently made some major life adjustments. The largest of these being that I left my job to stay home with our two children. I'm a former (on my third official day of freedom!) high school English teacher. Though there is nothing in the world I would rather spend my days doing than see to the raising of my own babies, I am not an excellent homemaker. This fact (and it IS a fact to which anyone who has ever been in my home can attest) is just one of the things that gave me doubt when we began to discuss the possibility of leaving my job to stay at home with the children. The other, I admit, was money. It was worry over not being able to provide my family with new clothes, a nice car, fun trips, and the myriad other things that I was, for some reason, worried about keeping. It was the pursuit of STUFF. I have long studied how to obtain more, and even while embarking on many short-lived attempts at living more simply, have never quite mastered the art of learning to live with less. I don't think that Thoreau means we ought to starve ourselves, or take up residence on the street without shelter overhead--even in his experiment at Walden, these needs were always met. But I do think that it is about deciding between what is needed and what is wanted, between convenience and necessity, between being "respectable" and worry about being "respected."

So the point is this: I am learning to rewrite the self-talk that occurs in my head. In the last months, I have quit my job, canceled the cable, and now drive a 20 year old van. There are many things I have been learning to do, most especially since having children, that I now see have been driven by this buried desire for simplicity. There are many more things that I have long aimed to do, but have failed because I have been too concerned with being respected. The trick is to undo all the learning and all the studying I have done over my life--to quit trying to obtain more and be content with less. As H.D. put it, “When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew what we thought we knew before.”

Hey, while you're here, check out this fun link about a high school that studies Thoreau, sent to me by one of my favorite people. How awesome would it be to sit through school amongst the trees?

“We are double-edged blades"...

..."and every time we whet our virtue the return stroke straps our vice.”
I started this blog in an attempt to rid myself of the vice of consumerism. To get free from the stuff with which I have fooled myself into owning, I am trying to cultivate the virtues of thrift, preservation, and simplicity. This is going to be harder than I thought.

Well, here's how deeply steeped I am in consumerism:

First, let me say I am excited and delighted to start this journey. I am heartened by the idea of a blog to keep me motivated, and decided that in order to do this the way I would like, I should re-read Walden for the fourth time--to keep my head in this game.

Why then, when beginning a journey to kick this plague of consumerism, did I decide that the best way to start was to purchase a NEW copy of a book I already OWN? I admit it. I am a bibliophile in the surest sense of the word. I used to nearly cry tears of joy at the beginning of each semester in college, delighting over the pages and bindings, and even the smell of the books I got to purchase every few months. But it is positively ironic that I would think the best way to start simplifying is to purchase something I don't even NEED!

Today, I made a specific trip, and I found myself wandering the aisles of a well-known book seller. I found a rather simple edition of Walden and Civil Disobedience, but was unsatisfied by it. I walked to the counter and after stuttering for a moment--trying to figure out how to verbalize what it was I was shopping for-- heard myself say to the associate, "I'm looking for a prettier edition of this." As soon as the words came out, I knew they were true, and I was ashamed of them--I had seen myself, really seen myself, for an instant. And it wasn't very pretty.

Out of obligation, I stood and waited for her to direct me to the "prettier" copies of Walden. I perused the shelf; I flipped through the pages. I tried justifying the purchase to myself with reasons like, "Well, you don't want that marked up copy--you need a clean slate for a fresh perspective," and etc. But in the end, I recognized the urge for what it was, set the books down (even the prettiest pocket sized one...) and walked out of there empty-handed, chanting my new mantra--"Simplify, simplify."

The next stop was my parents home, where boxes and boxes and boxes of MY books lie in wait in their attic. (This is to say nothing of the shelves and shelves and shelves of books in my home. Did I mention I am a bibliophile...and that I have a problem with stuff?) After just 20 minutes of digging, and one minor injury involving my toe, a thumbtack and a surprisingly large amount of blood, I emerged victorious with a rather bedraggled, but much-loved edition of Walden.

So, Mr. Thoreau--in paying homage to your writing, I will not be purchasing any more of it (not that you'd see the profits anyway--or even care if you did).

Kierra--1; Consumerism--0
(Or, if you rather: Virtue--1; Vice--0)
The battle moves forth.

"Men have become tools of their tools."

Not so very long ago, I was attempting to do some cleaning and organizing but found myself awash in the endless piles of STUFF in our tiny house (and yes, you can expect to hear many complaints about all the stuff we have milling about). I nearly broke down as a pile of said stuff fell from the top shelf of our hall closet, landing square on the top of my head, and in a fit of rage at having let things get like this, I shouted to my husband, "I am sick of all this STUFF in our house! We don't own it! All this STUFF owns US!" and in that very moment, I realized that I had hit upon as true an idea as I had ever had. I was absolutely right. Our lives were being run, and being run rather poorly, by all the things we had at some point thought we "needed."

We live in a small home, by American standards. Between the four of us (six if you count the fur babies), we share 840 square feet with no yard to speak of. We have a hall closet, and...well, that's nearly it for storage space. In such small quarters, it becomes very apparent, very quickly, that we are the tools of our tools. We seem constantly to be running through cycles of de-cluttering and re-organizing, only to find ourselves a few months later at the very same place we were before. We literally have days where we can't get from point A to point B because of all the STUFF around here. And truthfully, if it were all to suddenly vanish, I could count on one hand the items I would really, truly miss. So what is it all doing here?

We used to say we needed a bigger house. But now my feeling is that a bigger house would essentially do the same thing a bigger purse does--fill up. Have you ever noticed that when your purse fills and you get another, bigger purse, you suddenly have more than enough "essentials" to fill up the larger purse as well? And yet, the larger purse is only more cumbersome--the extra weight pulls your shoulder, the added depth makes it harder to find the few essentials that slip to the bottom, the papers you thought would be handy are suddenly crumpled into wastebasket-approved balls, and so it goes until your chiropractor is telling you he will be charging extra for your adjustments if you don't just "get rid of that thing." A tool of your tool.

I'm trying...trying to get rid of the things we must have once thought we "needed". Trying to keep only things that are truly essential. Trying to only allow things in our home that add to the vision of peace and simplicity we are working to cultivate. Trying not to be such a tool.

Lives of Quiet Desperation

When I was 16 or 17, I first encountered the genius that is Henry David Thoreau in a high school junior level English course. While my friends lamented what they saw as the pointlessness and tedious nature of Walden, with exclamations like, "Who CARES about ants in a fight?!?" and "Man, this guy sure likes to be alone...", I was struck in a way I was yet unable to understand by the simplicity, beauty, and absolute common sense behind what I was reading. Though it would take years for my youthfulness to wear away the many layers, from somewhere within, this song, awakened by Thoreau's writings, began the little scritch-scritch-scratch on the windows of my soul.

Some years later, as a college student in the great C.R. Cluff's American Renaissance course, I found the man again, and this time, it took. As I read Walden Pond, I found myself filling the pages with exclamation marks, highlights, post its and notes to myself--it was impossible for me to find the important parts, because frankly, it was all important to me. This venture into simplicity, this journey into the self and a quest for freedom from "convenience" struck me to the core. Though there have been moments where Thoreau slips to the back burner, he always finds his way forward again. And each time I am struck at the truth in his words--the wisdom, the reason, the simplicity that is found there. I find religion in what he teaches--I see in his words the things that the Lord would have me do. I find practical advice, and I find what my heart has spent so much time searching for. I realized that like the mass of men spoken of by Thoreau, we have been leading a life of quiet desperation. This blog is my effort at more fully living his advice and escaping that desperation.

My husband and I have reached a crossroads. We are about to embark on what we hope will be a remarkable journey and are seeking freedom from some of the "conveniences" of life. I am seeking a simpler way. I am seeking peace with myself, my home, my children, my faith. We are not abandoning our lives to live in the woods, nor are we seeking refuge from society as a whole. But we are hoping to find ways to strike the balance between what is enough, and what consumerism tells us we need--we are seeking freedom from our stuff, we are on the road to owning our own lives. So with the Lord on my side, and a bit of practical advice and words of wisdom from the man at Walden Pond, we begin....