The Year Without As Much Stuff

We are almost a full month into 2015. I can’t even believe that. I know I’m a few weeks late on the new year/new goals posts, but truthfully I wasn’t sure I was going to share this. And truthfully it’s something we started before the new year.

My husband and I have made an official decision about 2015. It will be The Year Without As Much Stuff (yeah I’m working on a better title, currently taking submissions). The parameters of this goal are simple: anything we CAN buy used we do, and anything we CAN’T buy used we reevaluate the importance of and try to go without. The whys of this goal are less simple. Most people assume it’s about money, but that is not even remotely close to what it’s about.

Let me explain in a way most people (or at least women) I know will understand. Let’s start with Target. Now listen, I love Target. Like, deep in my bones, all the memes are true, I want to sleep there after hours love. L. O. V. E. So I’m heading to Target because the bakery there sells these really incredible shortbread cookies filled with dark chocolate. I can only get them at Target and I need almond milk anyway so I pack up the kids and head out. My three year old, Gabe, wants us to get the BIG cart but it’s a snowy yuck day and they’re all wet and I have nothing to wipe them down with so we have to settle for the regular sized cart and he is pouting as I set him in the basket end and his pouting pushes his sister, my one year old named Lula, into pouts as well. We aren’t two feet into the store when I realize this may not be worth it for the cookies. Conveniently most Targets have a Starbucks inside them and I’m pretty sure a sugary frothy warm cup of goodness is just what I need (that’s on the menu, just ask for it). As I’m standing there waiting to order my son see’s the chocolate milk and stops his pouting and angelically asks if he can have one, so I get him one because he did say please and chocolate milk is a once in a blue moon treat and I’m here for my once in a blue moon treat so why not. While we wait for my drink to be made I notice that the new line of cold cup tumblers are on display and the old new line of cold cup tumblers is on clearance for 20% off and $10 is a bargain for a cup that used to be $12 and as anyone who knows me can attest I am a sucker for a cold cup. It’s a weird obsession, I know.

Okay, now on to the cookies and the milk. And maybe just a quick peruse through the clearance clothes. I don’t need anything in particular at the moment but a bargain is a bargain and double plus bonus when a bargain is also cute! And sure enough, all their wintery delightful sweaters are somewhere between 30 and 70 percent off. I grab two. I love a good cardi.

And just for good measure I’m going to swing through the dollar spot, because, hello, everything is $1-$3! And look! Fuzzy winter socks, cute chalkboard stickers, washi tape and kids sunglasses! Man! Alright, I’m done, I swear, wait, baby clothes, NO! I’m done. Heading to the cashier now. Man, this was a really productive trip to Target, I think to myself as I pay for all my new awesomeness.

Productive.

What exactly did I produce, you ask? Well, one sunny, cold, self-reflective morning I asked that too. And the answer? Waste. All kinds of it.

I want to stop here and say something really, really clearly. This post is not meant to shame anyone. I’m not interested in convincing anyone of anything. What I’m interested in is talking about how I felt after I had this epiphanous moment. So understand that anything I say from here on out is directed at me and not you, if it pricks at you, impacts you or challenges you, then truthfully I’m glad, but my intent here is to explain me, not condemn you.

There are a million reasons for me to change this behavior of buying more than I need in myself, to teach my children differently. But here my top two.

Kingdom mindedness - I crave a simple life, not small, but simple. Look at John the Baptist. The man ate bugs, he slept in the desert and wore the same clothes everyday. But his life was anything but small. Sometimes I think we mistake the number of options we have in any area of our lives for the size of the life that we’re living. The more clothes we have, the more gadgets we have, the more hip wall art or trendy accessories we gather, the more we start to see those things as some sort of announcement that we’re doing well, that we’re doing something big. I want to live a genuinely big life, a life where God is at the center of it, where my actions and thoughts and everything I do glorifies Him and contributes to His kingdom. And sometimes less options and more simplicity is more conducive to that. I never want to be blinded by how much I have and be fooled into complacency, to be deceived into thinking I’ve accomplished something. Warren Wiersbe talks about being Kingdom minded, and I don’t think it’s possible to be Kingdom minded if my life and home are cluttered with distractions of this earth. Please hear me say I am not against things. I love things. But I am against the over abundance of things. Think of it this way: if what I treasure is one earth than I am earth minded, I will over complicate my life and focus on the small facts of my temporal situation. But if what I treasure is in Heaven, then I will be Kingdom minded, I will focus on the eternal things and live a simple but big life.

19“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20“But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; 21for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. - Matthew 6:19-21

Social Responsibility - This is a big umbrella, and a lot falls under it. When I buy something I’m using my money to say that I approve of that company. When I spend money at a company I am saying I’m on board with how much or how little they monitor their supply chain, how they treat their workers, how their manufacturers and textile factories treat their workers, their company policies and their environmental impact. I’m not only supporting them I am supporting the companies they support in all of these categories as well, and so on and so on. That’s a lot of responsibility. But it doesn’t end there. After I’ve bought this something, say my hypothetical sweater from Target, and I’ve worn it a few times and it’s okay, but one day it doesn’t make it through the spring cleaning purge. Into the bag it goes to be donated to Goodwill or the Salvation Army. That’s not so bad, right? Except only 20% of the clothing donated to Goodwill makes it into stores. Annually the US exports over a billion pounds of used clothing, most of it heading to impoverished nations. Which also doesn’t sound so bad, right? Do you remember the old adage, give a man a fish and he eats for a day, teach a man to fish and he eats for a lifetime? The problem with flooding third world countries with cheap used clothing is the impact that it has on those local economies, and even their cultures. In her book Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion Elizabeth Cline examines the cultures of the areas where these used clothes end up and discusses the shifts in the economics and cultures there. The more affluent some of those areas become the less interested they are in our cast offs, meaning our solution to this problem is rapidly coming to a close, and the poorer some of those areas become, the bigger the problem our used clothes become for them to get out from underneath poverty. I can’t justify being part of this cycle.

17Learn to do good; Seek justice, Reprove the ruthless, Defend the orphan, Plead for the widow. - Isaiah 1:17

But are either of these better or worse than simply throwing away my used clothes, putting them in a landfill? I believe that this planet is the Lord’s, and that He has given us dominion over it, to steward it, not to destroy it. I believe that He cares deeply for this world He lovingly created and that how we treat it is a matter of honoring Him. I am not in the habit of destroying gifts that God puts in my care.

1The earth is the LORD’S, and all it contains - Psalm 24:1a

I know this has been long, and here is the end, I promise. After all this thought, and all this research, I approached my husband and shared my heart with him, and we made a commitment that for the next full year we would not buy anything new, that we would live in such a way that honored the gift of this planet, and that did not contribute to injustices visited on oppressed people. This is long road and this is first step, small and shaky, and it’s deeply, deeply personal. I am not condemning anyone or prescribing a lifestyle for anyone. I am simply sharing where my heart is, a commitment we’ve made, and the things that spurred us to that commitment.

(Image Source; image credit: Sarah Lazarovic)

For more information on the book Overdressed click here.

To find out more about the companies you support click here.

If you’ve made it this far let me know in the comments and  I will personally send you a little surprise as a thank you for reading my uberpost.

The Problem With Your Problem With Christian Cleavage

{written 1.24.15 at 1:30am}

Oh. Man. It's past midnight, it's gonna be a long weekend, and I should be asleep. But there's a trending topic on twitter that is haunting me, just absolutely haunting me. 

#christiancleavage

A (male) Christian author and pastor wrote a blog post yesterday entitled "The Problem With Christian Cleavage". It said the same things we've all heard, keep things covered, I could get hot and bothered just looking at your knees so don't make it harder (no pun intended) (I don't think), men are visual creatures, women should avoid being a stumbling block to their very sensitive eyes. And it of course created the expected backlash. The post was title "The Problem With Christian Cleavage" and among other issues, directed it's entire argument at women and their need to cover up or be doomed to be a stumbling block, it blamed any and all skin showing on a lack of self-esteem and credits the pastor himself as "a man who greatly yearns for women to find their identity in Christ". Which is all well and good but sets up an et nature me vs. you paradigm off the bat. 

 

I was 20 years old and a youth leader in my church and still maneuvering my way through who I was as a person and as a Christian. And one mom, we'll call her Mrs. Mean, on more than one occasion referred to me as a hooker. In fact the very first time I ever met her she walked up to me and took me by the hands and asked me if I knew how slutty my clothing was, if I knew I was stumbling block to her 13 year old son. "Iron sharpens iron," she said, "and you should have either worn a different shirt or stayed home." And then she did the most damaging thing she could do in that moment. She insisted on praying for me while gripping my hands so I couldn't walk away. She never even asked me my name. 

It felt like someone had set me on fire.

I will forever be thankful to the youth pastor I was serving under at the time who made it clear to her she was never to address her concerns to me again and only bring them to him. He took bullets for me that would probably have driven me out of the church. But I still caught the way she glared at me as she picked up her kids. 

Let me make one thing really clear here. As a 30 year old woman I look back at that girl and know that I was absolutely not doing anything wrong. My clothes weren't inappropriate, and if I was a stumbling block to her son it was probably because she had taught her son that any women's clothing that wasn't a turtle neck could be a stumbling block. Or because he was a teenage boy and I was, you know, female. But I didn't get that then. Can I tell you how I sobbed? Can I tell you how I tried to leave volunteering with the youth? Or how I threw out several pieces of perfectly modest (and cute!) clothes? Can I tell you how ashamed I was? How embarrassed? How I would freeze in panic whenever she came to pick up her kids? Her son, he's a young man now, married and has kids, happy, God-fearing, whatever damage I or anyone else did with our oh so dangerous lady-bits seems to have been short term. In other words he became a grown man and is fine. It took me ten years to even begin to find healing from the harm she inflicted on me. We recently saw each other at a wedding and I felt all those same feelings, I felt a physical, visceral reaction to her. I felt panicked and shamed and less than.

Let's forget the debate over whether men are visual or whether women need to cover up or men need to take responsibility. Let's talk, instead, about who's job it is to convict someone of how they dress, or anything else. Ready? Not yours ever. It is the Holy Spirit's job. And if you try to do his job you will always ALWAYS fail. You will ALWAYS do more harm than good. The Holy Spirit does not shame and demean, he is not in the business of making people feel small and unloved. Conviction is pinpoint accurate, shame is always a lie. Conviction is about love, it's rooted in love, and it cannot happen unless love is the foundation of the relationship. I know the Spirit loves me, so when I feel the push towards conviction, it might hurt, but I know it's root. When bloggers and pastors and people who KNOW ALL THE THINGS post words for the entire world to see and feel, when they aim with their eyes closed and hope a target, any target, gets hit, love is not even remotely part of the equation. 

I do believe that the Holy Spirit can use people, pastors, bloggers, authors, anyone really, to speak words that create conviction in someone. But when I've seen that done it almost always came with a heart full of love and compassion and very rarely with a me vs. you sound. I once heard it preached that the amount of time you spend in prayer for someone is directly proportionate to your right to speak into their life. This advice is not just for us one on one. This is perfect advice for anyone trying speak into the lives of anyone. It's for pastors, speakers, authors, bloggers, tweeters, facebookers and anything I forgot. Your right to speak into the lives of anyone is directly proportional to the amount of time you spend praying for those people, whether it's your church, your audience or your followers, or your neighbor, or friends.