Unloading

I just haven't been quite right since coming back from Africa. I can't seem to get anything in focus, I feel like I'm in a constant fog. I find myself staring off into space a lot. Not because of anything that happened there--no great epiphanies or anything.

Just maybe spending an entire week living simply. It was organic and authentic. We were deconstructed to the point where all we had was time, unencumbered by physical things or mental schedules we bind and masochate ourselves with.

I'd love to say we've rid ourselves of more "stuff", become more content, find beauty and peace in this place of abundant blessing, but it comes and goes in nauseating waves. And ironically I more often feel more sick at what we do have than what we don't, and long to purge and expunge what is making me feel so bloated and unwieldy in my spirit.

I open our fridge full of food and just don't feel like eating. I get angry tripping over the myriad toys and shoes left all over the house. The pile of laundry up to my shoulder and the constant dishwasher full of clean or dirty dishes. It's just too much. There's stuff everywhere. I feel claustrophobic and suffocated by stuff. By people. By interactions. By responsibilities. By culture. By church. By me. By sounds. By everything. By nothing. By you.

For 30 years I've been in the habit of amassing, defining who I am by what I have, what I'm doing, how busy I am, and I think I've come to the point where I realize I've just been gorging all these years. It's time to binge, shed some weight, keep what's healthy in my life and stop nicking a little nibble of each and every "good" thing I come across, and only choose to feast on the best that life has to offer. Stop filling every day and week with so many events and errands that when I don't have something scheduled I don't know what to do with mysellf and am uncomfortable with the quiet, the un-busyness, the isolation. To stop giving tiny little pieces of myself out to so many people that I'm not giving any substantial pieces to anyone--especially those who most deserve and need those big pieces of me right now.

On to the oh-so-deep often asked question, "what does this life of healthful simplicity and contentment look like"? Well, if I knew what that looked like, don't you think I'd describe it? Do it? Live it? Not be writing this post?