Having a clear out...

I am cold.  Very cold.  No matter how many times I try to explain how this feels, I do not believe I have adequately conveyed the experience.  However, I did remember to check what my temperature is at the moment: 96.2.  My skin is quite icy, too.

The grief over the memory loss is still weighing heavily upon me.  I have already had two people tell me to just write the Lord's Prayer and the Apostle's Creed down.  I could do so on index cards and have them in key spots in the house.  Practical advice when I am despairing is honestly the LAST thing I need.  But, more importantly, when I am writhing in great pain and misery, reading is the last thing I can do.  When I am near insensible with misery, I need things in my mind outside of my suffering.  Things that are more accurate about who I am and where my hope lies than my own mind is likely to conclude.

So, of course, I did the only thing I could do.  I had a clear out last night.

A while ago, I watched the British television series As Time Goes By, starring Geoffry Palmer and Judi Dench.  Gosh, when I got to the fifth season (I think it was) there were a few episodes where I literally was laughing so hard I had to turn it off lest my asthma attack started by the laughter become unmanageable with my home nebulizer.  Just typing this makes me want to stick in the first DVD and watch them all over again.

Anyway, whilst watching them, I learned what it was I was doing when I go through closets and drawers and such to repurpose, recycle, donate, trash, and otherwise reduce my stuff.  I am "having a clear out."

I have a tiny pile after going through the first and second floors: a measuring tape, two small flashlights (conference give aways), a old Sony digital recorder, an old bluetooth headset (working), a linen and lace Kleenex box cover, a pen with a USB flash drive in the cap, three books, and two old pair of glasses.  With the seminary grad home for Christmas, I plan to re-assess the basement, too.

Is it about control, because I have none about what is happening to my body and my mind?  Perhaps.  I would not argue that.  However, doing so is quietening me.  It stills me, soothes me.  Doing so provides a focus outside of me with a positive, visible end result.  But there is more.

I think, often, about when I die.  When that time comes, I do now wish for my trustee, my best friend, to have to plow through bunches and bunches of "stuff."  If I do not need it or really savor it (like my antique camera collection), then slowly, bit by bit I have reduced the things in my house, in my life.  Drawers, closets, storage areas.  I keep the practical and what might be used.  I keep the enjoyable-to-me.  I keep the needful.  The rest is going ... or gone.

My kitchen is practically bare-boned when it comes to cooking, because so much of what I had I was not using.  Cooking is too difficult.  It is oft fraught with failure.  So, I have three pots (small, medium, and large) and two pans (medium and large).  I have some cooking pans and two oven stoneware trays.  Some utensils, but even those I cut by 2/3.  All the kitchen things I didn't need went to a non-profit that outfits homeless families who are returning to a permanent shelter.

That was a good move.  Less can be more.  But the less is split between wondering if others can use the stuff  and worrying about Bettina having to pack up and get rid of all that is in my home when I die (or all that is with me wherever I am).  I do not wish to burden her any more than she already will be.

I had a clear out for me.
I had a clear out for her.
I had a clear out.

I still cannot find the words in my head.  Oh, how I need that Word.  Oh, how I need them to clear out the things from my heart and my mind that are long overdue in needing a clear out.

"I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth."
What comes next?

"Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name.  Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done.  On earth as it is in heaven."
What comes next?


Would that it were the lies were lost and the truth remain....

I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!