“When you think of our time here in light of eternity, spending your life trying to perpetually upgrade your home, is like deciding to install granite countertops during your weekend stay at the Holiday Inn.” -Paraphrase Joby Martin, Church of Eleven22
I’ll never forget the first time I heard that sermon illustration. It made so much sense and felt like somebody had just lifted a lead blanket from my shoulders. So much of life for the modern American middle-classer is directed toward self-improvement, status-improvement, and home-improvement of all kinds. NONE of those are bad aspirations, but if they are to be pursued, they definitely must be pursued in light of context, and rightly-ordered priorities.
Before I became a Christian and realized that this life a vapor (something I still struggle to remember!), I had a lengthy and detailed map for my road to the pinnacle of American success. I would be perpetually upwardly mobile, never settling for less than I could achieve should I increase my level of diligence. Success was well-defined and measurable based on income level, number of vacations taken, career position, and of course for our HGTV beholden culture, it would have to include a house that was LEGIT.
I’m sure many of you have found yourselves in lives that don’t reflect what you had planned for yourself in high school, or am I alone in this? Through several turns of events and unforeseen forks in the road, I have now spent a decade as a stay at home mom, living the orchard life, and gazing at peeling wall paper in my kitchen while I tirelessly try to pitch and re-order enough stuff to make our family of 5 feel as un-suffocated as possible in our home. Once I found the freedom to get rid of all KINDS of stuff (including some of those precious preschool papers and junk toys and sentimental gifts), it became much easier to create a home that feels just right for our family.
At the risk of sounding terribly self-absorbed (I mean, it’s actually true but now I’m just telling all of you), I’ve spent an inordinate amount of my life over the last 10 years examining myself and our life and trying to figure out how to feel more content in all of it. The fight for contentment is a battle that I have to wage daily. I want to be the mom that enjoys the chaos because the kids are having fun, but I’m not wired that way.
Photo by Jason Leung on Unsplash
What makes me the most frustrated about my own unceasing internal dialogue, is that my life is GOOD and I have to constantly fight to embrace it. To so many people I am living the absolute dream. And when I take a second to really look at everything I have to be thankful for, I actually feel really silly considering all the things I still focus on and find lacking. I am frustrated that I seem to give into the temptation to believe that newer, bigger, better will somehow make me happier. It is SUCH a lie. I’m not even kidding, about 4 years ago I just had to shut off HGTV for good. I found that every time I watched it I felt “less-than” or discouraged because I know that no matter how hard I try or how creative I get, this place will never look like “that place”.
Does this confession make me sound like the most shallow person ever? Maybe so. But I’m risking sharing my ridiculousness in the hopes that it will set someone else free. I don’t want to live a life enslaved to making sure my paint colors are up to date, my spaces are fresh and modern, and my kids’ rooms resemble a pottery barn catalogue. Instead I want to remember that I am to: “live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ”. I can live this way, focused on the temporary nature of my life here and the great calling that I, along with every other believer have been given, when I remember this truth from the Apostle Peter: “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ!. In his great mercy he has given us new birth into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you.”
When I spend all my days trying to earn and grab an “inheritance” of earthly things that will ultimately break, decay, and lose their value, it makes me take my eye off the ball. I want to live in a way where I’m absolutely convinced that my inheritance is already secure and I don't’ have to work for it or manipulate the people and variables in my life in order to ‘get mine’ in the here and now.
And it is for such a time as this that it’s vital that we live this way. This world is full of so much confusion, chaos, and brokenness. If I have a light, I want it to shine. I don’t want it to stay trapped under heavy load of self-imposed pseudo-priorities that will matter zero percent in 100 years. I’ve got to be after the eternal things; hearts and souls. Everything else will disappear. Including my peeling wall paper and short countertops.
"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” Matthew 6:19
Photo by Milivoj Kuhar on Unsplash
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