Some shit doesn't deserve a moving box.
A few years ago, my stepdaughter Miranda read a book about getting rid of things that don't bring you joy. I thought it was brilliant.
Seriously. Why do we keep stuff that makes us miserable? You know what I'm talking about. That ugly lamp in the corner. The kitchen gadget you bought fifteen years ago that promised to free up hours of your time but didn’t. The shirt you wore in high school that has a hole in it and hasn’t fit you since high school. We keep this stuff. Why?
I understand keeping the Christmas ornaments our kids made in kindergarten. Family pictures. Keepsakes that mean something to us. Those things pass the Miranda Test. But a lot of the shit filling our homes? We don't even like it. We just dust around it.
Sally was someone my wife Jessica loved dearly. When Sally died, her family gave Jessica a plant from the funeral. Not exactly a gift you can toss in the garbage without feeling like a terrible human being. Plants and Jessica haven't always enjoyed particularly long relationships. But this plant? It grew like crazy. And Jessica hated it. Not Sally. The plant. But she couldn't get rid of it. Getting rid of the plant felt like getting rid of Sally. Eventually, Jessica gave the plant to our daughter. Sally didn't disappear. The memories didn't disappear. Only the plant moved. And getting that plant out of our home brought Jess joy.
I kept a bunch of clothes that were too big for me. I'd lost weight, but I kept them because I figured someday, I might gain the weight back. There's a vote of confidence in yourself. They were my just-in-case clothes. Congratulations on losing the weight, Mark. We've saved your fat pants because we don't trust you to keep it off. Every time I opened that closet, there they were. A complete wardrobe dedicated to the possibility of future failure.
One day, I looked at those clothes and thought, why am I keeping these? If I gain the weight back, I'll deal with it then. But why am I giving closet space to something I don't want to become? Gone. Goodwill. Somebody else can enjoy those pants. I'm not keeping a shrine to my former fat ass.
When I first opened my insurance office, I bought a desk chair. I hated that chair from day one. One of the wheels kept falling off. I'd lean back, shift my weight, or make the reckless decision to sit in it, and suddenly I'd be headed toward the floor. But I kept it. Why? Because it was my first office chair. It was practically a historical artifact. You know, like the first dollar a business owner frames and hangs on the wall. Except this particular piece of history kept dumping me on my ass.
Not long ago, the wheel came off again. Down I went. Coffee everywhere. Cuss words flying.
I sat, on the floor, covered in coffee, staring at a chair that had been trying to kill me for years. And I thought: This does not pass the Miranda Test. Out it went. I bought a new chair. Joy.
I grew up a preacher's kid. Every few years, my dad would take another church, and we'd pack up our lives and move. New church. New town. New house. Same old moving boxes. Every time, we had to decide what was worth taking. I wish Miranda had been around back then. She could've saved us a fortune in moving expenses.
These days, if I haven't used something in a year, it's probably gone. Goodwill. Garbage. Goodbye. Thanks to Miranda, I've learned to use joy as a filter for sorting through the shit in my life.
The “Miranda Test” got me wondering about something that has absolutely nothing to do with plants, pants, or killer office furniture. What about all the other shit we hang on to? Not the stuff taking up space in our closets. The stuff taking up space in our lives.
I've sat through meetings that accomplished absolutely nothing. An hour of information nobody needed, followed by another hour of cheerleading and somebody telling us how excited we should be about whatever we just talked about.
And I'm sitting there thinking, what are we doing?
We just spent two hours of our lives talking about how wonderful everything is, and I leave feeling like somebody sucked the last ounce of life out of me with a Shop-Vac. But we'll do it again next month. Same people. Same agenda. Same bullshit. Maybe different donuts.
And it's not just meetings. We say yes to things we don't want to do. We keep commitments that stopped meaning anything to us years ago. We spend money on stuff we don't need to impress people we don't particularly like. We fill our calendars until there's no room left for the people we love, the things that make us laugh, or even a quiet afternoon when nobody needs a thing from us. Then we wonder why we're exhausted.
We've gotten so good at filling our lives that we've forgotten to ask whether any of it is actually worth living for. Jesus said, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21, NIV). I've heard that verse used in more stewardship sermons than I care to remember. Usually right before somebody passes the offering plate. But what if Jesus was talking about something much bigger than money?
What if our treasure is also our time? Our attention? Our energy? Those precious hours of life we will never get back? Maybe we've got a heart problem. Not because our hearts are too small. Maybe we've just been spending them on the wrong shit. And by the time we get around to the people and things we actually love, there's not much left to give.
Somewhere along the way, joy got shoved into a box marked Someday.
Someday I'll spend more time with my family.
Someday I'll take that trip.
Someday I'll call that old friend.
Someday I'll sit on the porch, drink a cup of coffee, and watch the world go by without feeling guilty that I'm not doing something productive.
Someday.
Well, I have some bad news about someday. It's not on the calendar.
I'm not suggesting we quit our jobs, abandon our responsibilities, or tell everyone who annoys us to go jump in a lake. Although I suspect some of you already have a list started.
Life isn't supposed to be nonstop happiness. Some of the most meaningful things we do are difficult, exhausting, and heartbreaking. Caring for someone we love who's dying doesn't necessarily bring us joy. Neither does sitting beside a friend whose world has fallen apart. But there's a difference between being exhausted because we love somebody and being exhausted because we forgot we could say no. Some things cost us dearly and are worth every bit of it. Others just suck the life out of us. The first kind? Those things pass the Miranda Test.
Sitting through another pointless meeting because we've always had a pointless meeting on the third Tuesday of every month? That shit needs to go.
I don't know how many years I have left. Neither do you. But I'm not interested in spending them dusting things I hate, sitting in chairs that try to kill me, or attending meetings that could have been an email.
I want more laughter. More time with the people I love. More conversations that make me think. More of whatever reminds me that this ridiculous, messy, heartbreaking life is worth living.
Jesus called it abundant life. I don't think he meant an abundance of shit to do.
Take a look at your life. Find something that doesn't deserve the space it's taking up.
And for the love of God, let it go.
Unless it's a meeting to discuss whether we should eliminate unnecessary meetings.
You'd better attend that one. Apparently, there's a PowerPoint.
Shalom, Shithead
