Clutter and Corrie and Character

 The weekend is here. What have we been up to this week?

Well, the house is on the market, so we're in waiting stage. Does anyone like to wait? I remember waiting for babies to come, being so infernally weary of carrying them around on the inside, thinking it would be easier once they made their appearance, and of course it wasn't. It was wonderful, but it was also exhausting and worrysome and expensive and frustrating.

That only lasted eighteen or so years with each one.

So I've decided while we wait for God to send our buyer, and direct us to the right next house for us, I'll declutter. If you'd walk into our home you wouldn't see an iota of clutter, but it's there. Hidden in files and closets and drawers. Every single thing in this house will eventually have to be boxed up and packed in a van, then unpacked and put away. So now is a great time to get rid of what we're not using.

Before we went on the market I went to Goodwill with a load of stuff. God bless the people who are in receiving at Goodwill, I'm convinced that's where God would send me if I ended up in Hell, culling through people's ratty t-shirts and broken appliances. I handed a bread machine over to the woman, and she said to me, 'we get a lot of those.' I thought, I bet you do, you've gotten several from me over the years. So - Bev, write it down in sharpie, 'you will never, ever, ever buy another bread machine, even if it's only $5 at Goodwill, because you do not bake bread. You prefer to buy it at Sprouts for $5 a loaf, and even then you and Cub Sweetheart end up eating only half of it.'

I did not give away my waffle maker. I saw it hiding in the back of the appliance drawer and left it there in hopes it'll somehow jump out onto the kitchen counter, plug it itself in, and make me waffles some morning soon.

Nobody who knows me / us would call us cluttery, but really what's sitting out in your house doesn't necessarily determine if you are or aren't. And really, we all are. It's whether you're actually using what's in your home, not whether you went to the Container Store and made it pretty, that rats you out.

If you, like me, have a tendency to save Altoid tins, thinking you'll use them for something, or have a stash of Amazon boxes in the closet, you might, like me, be just a teensy bit cluttery.

Shoe boxes, take home take out containers, magazines from three years ago because the cover was pretty. Files from vacations we went on three years ago (and yes, we make a file when we go on vacation.) (No, we're not OCD.)

So I went to trim my toenails because it was that or start buying a lot of new socks, and that would have cluttered up the sock drawer.

This little kit looked reasonably organized from sky view. And in fairness, it was all in one place.

My manicure / pedicure kit with all the junkola pulled out

But inside I had three sets of clippers, and every single toe separator thingy I've worn home from a pedicure for the past few years. Apparently I think I'm going to do pedicures myself, and I'm going to reuse those. But I don't. So I threw all the extras away. I kept the pink, red and clear polish because I'm almost 65 and haven't been able to venture into blue or green nail polish. It just looks reptilian to me, and the yellow looks like I need to sit in the sun for extended periods of time.

Maybe if I was a pop star? (And BTW, what on earth is up with women having nails two inches long? The woman who took my bread machine at Goodwill had them. And I won't tell you specifically what immediately came to my mind, but really, how do you.....?)

That dark, dark maroon that is almost black? It sort of maybe looks pretty on other women, sometimes, but inside I'm thinking it reminds me of the scary girls in high school. Or a little bit like Morticia Adams.

See her fingers?!

But red or pink is always, always right.

All the junkola on the right went into the trash

We toured a few homes this week, one with our realtor and two through something called Open Door. So weird. You download an app, stand at the front door and it opens and you go into a vacant house and tour it alone. If you like it you can send them an offer through the app.

Really?

Seems a bit strange to me, but I guess it's the way the world is going. We have self-checkout at the grocery, Lowes, Target, and now at vacant homes.

 I found myself wondering who paints their laundry room purple? Is it someone who loves doing laundry (does that person exist?) or someone who hates it so much they had to make the room happy? It went well with the purple bedroom, but that seemed to have belonged to a kid, and I don't think there's a kid on the planet who cares a whit about the laundry room in their house. I had three who barely knew it existed for most of their tenancy with us.

On a busting your buttons level, our oldest grandson, on the left, started playing Water Polo a handful of years ago, and the fact that he didn't drown from the experience is pretty amazing. They play in deep water, and are constantly swimming or staying in one place by doing what they call 'eggbeaters' underwater, all the while wearing teensy speedos and funny looking bonnets on their heads to identify their team. He was captain of the team this, his senior, year, and ended up finishing with a win at state, and being given the MVP award, and even better, the character award by his coaches.

Cub Sweetheart and I have said that, more than intelligence, or cleverness, or God-given abilities, a good work ethic is the best thing to take into life, because it'll get you farther than all the rest put together. But I've come to realize a good work ethic is just one part of a larger picture - overall character, and this kid has it. So we're proud he was the captain, and that he helped lead his team to a win at state, and that he was given the MVP award, but receiving the character award tells me his parents have done a bang up job of raising him to be ready to launch out and make a difference in the world.

The kid on the right is his younger brother, also a water polo player and following in his footsteps. Some would say they are big shoes to fill, but how blessed is he, to have had such a great example in his older brother?

The little one in front does not play water polo. Currently she does not prefer to get her face wet, so she does not actually swim, but I expect she's going to be the first female president and maybe a water polo player on the side.

I attended a luncheon committee meeting at Dallas Baptist University this week, (which means, at my level of serving, that we help choose flowers and set the menu.)  It was held in the Corrie Ten Boom room, a place I've wanted to visit for years, where they had a little museum set up of Corrie's book and belongings and such. What a privilege to see it!

Corrie didn't, as far as I know, participate in water polo, but that woman had character, and went on to change her world. I'm sure her parents had no idea, as they were raising her and her siblings, what they would ultimately face in their world, but they instilled character in them. It served them well, to the point they left their mark on history.

I used to think, when I was a lot younger, that it was a parent's job to raise their kids to turn out, as I put it, 'into someone who can go out into the world and contribute to it, hopefully for eternity.' Somewhere along the line I realized God was also growing character in me in the process; I needed to finish growing up myself, in so many ways.

We're off to see Call of the Wild with family tonight - starring Harrison Ford and a pixelated dog, then a basketball game ton Saturday, and Cub Sweetheart is doing so well in his recovery from knee replacement that we're able to go back to church. It's chilly here in Texas, but the sun is out!

Happy weekend everyone. Make it a good one.