What the...?!

"Charlie, we don't say, 'what the . . .?!'"

I know, I know. You're probably saying, "what the…?!" because of the vagueness of my previous post. (We don't say "what the…?!", by the way).

I have a dream, a dream only slightly less epic than MLK, Jr.'s.

I want to systematically and radically clean out all the non-functional, under-used "stuff" in my life.

Now don't panic. I'm not talking about people. If you haven't lent me a cup of sugar when I've been in a pinch (non-functional), or we haven't had a deep heart-to-heart or cerebral tête-à-tête in a while (under-used), I'm not giving you the boot. No, this is about stuff; stuff in my house, stuff in my head, stuff in my food, stuff in my spirit, stuff in my soul.

We live in 1,146 square feet on one acre of land. We have three children. We have a dog. We are a one-income household. We live busy lives in vocational ministry. I can hardly insure getting to take a bath, much less take time to spend with Jesus. Many a lunch consist of a handful of chocolate chips whose intended purpose was to be turned into Christmas goodies to be given away, but were never made when placed up against the demands of diapers and dishes. Trying to keep life streamlined, efficient, and peaceful within all the realities of all of these things can be precarious at best. In the immortal words of the poet laureate, Major Payne, "needless to say, there was plenty of opposition".

Ain't it the truth.

So I'm throwing down a gauntlet: us or the stuffs. Use it or lose it.

Stuff's good, and I've got some good stuff. But I sure like the us-es more than the stuffses.

There isn't a "thing" I can't live without.

Time to beat out some chaff and harvest some good wheat.
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry