Getting Closer

It's a little over 2 months away until our big move! It's starting to get real. I'm really excited about moving to New Orleans and becoming a seminary family, but I'm also nervous. That's a lot of change, and it's so far away from all that is familiar.

I've been pulling out things to get rid of since we will be living in a small apartment. It's so hard to prepare to move in to a place that you've never seen. All I have is a floor plan. Going by that floor plan, I've realized that we are going to have to sell our couch. I love our couch. It's red, comfy, and big. The big part is the reason it's got to go. I have to admit that out of all the things we are getting rid of the couch makes me the saddest. All the extra stuff that we had hanging around is not hard to get rid of. I started going through stuff with the rule that I have to love it and/or need it in order to keep it, but I love our couch and I don't get to keep it. The two pieces of furniture that we actually bought that weren't hand-me-downs, we have to get rid of because that just won't fit in our apartment. Sad times, but to bring myself back to reality, it's all just stuff. Stuff that will one day break, wear down, and eventually decompose out in a landfill some day.

All this reminds me that following Jesus is not easy. We have to surrender everything to Him, and that's tough. The deeper in my relationship with Christ the more I realize I haven't surrendered to Him. It hurts to release our tight grips on the comforts of this world, but the beauty of having surrendered what we deem as precious, to be filled all the more with my precious Savior makes all the pain worth it. I love the adventure of following Jesus. To the world, He may lead me down the path of craziness and stupidity, but as the Alpha and Omega, I know that I am secure, eternally secure, and that's all that matters. As we shed some of our earthly belongings to prepare for our move, I'm also shedding some more of the inner belongings that are taking up valuable space for the Holy Spirit to reign supremely in my life. I wouldn't trade it for the world.