The Advocate May-June 2006
The Box Rebellion
By Steve Gosser Walton
Posted: Jun 11, 2006, 21:12

I can’t find my shoes. And the sugar bowl has gone missing also.

We are in the final days of packing to move to our new house. Jessica is methodically packing everything in boxes and meticulously labeling each box. I am afraid to sit still for I might end up wrapped in paper and placed in a box labeled “Steve - Open last.”

It was sort of a whirlwind. We decided to move to Paris (Kentucky — that is). I mentioned this to a Realtor friend at church; we went looking at houses a few days later, and one week after my conversation leaning against a doorjamb at church we made an offer on the first house we had looked at.

Offers and counteroffers. Appraisals and inspections. LOTS of phone calls and e-mails back and forth with the loan officer. Jessica was calm and strong and understanding. I was none of those things. She would smile and listen, and I would frown and not listen.

After signing our names to more pieces of paper than seems environmentally conscious we now own a beautiful little house, with a beautiful little yard, with beautiful little flowers that I can’t identify.

Boxes litter the hallway making it almost impossible to move.

How is it possible? How can we have so much stuff?

Two nights ago I found a box in the closet that had never been unpacked from the last move — four years ago. Upon inspection I realized it had been around from my first move (the one from my parents’ house to my first apartment).

It looks to be the contents of drawers, dumped hastily in the last moments of moving. The assemblage seems better suited for the garbage as opposed to a box. I must have had no time, at the time, to sort through it. Now I still have no time, at the time, to sort through it.

It is like a time capsule. They say you can tell a lot about a person by what he or she throws away, even more than by what the person keeps. (I don’t know who “they” are — but they sure say a lot of things). Here before me is a box of stuff that never got around to going to the landfill. The contents of a drawer from 10 years ago. Bits of paper, receipts, pay stubs, trinkets, cards, photos with slightly familiar faces, a set of keys, names and phone numbers of people I don’t remember, a ceramic pig, old movie tickets, a to-do list ...

The question is not why I kept this stuff; the question is whose stuff was this?

I have no memories of some of it. I have vivid memories of others. Long forgotten people and events trickle back to me and puddle up like an unseen leak high up in the roof.

I sealed the time capsule back up and placed it in a larger box. The larger box contains all the things I don’t care enough to look at, but care too much for to throw away. I pull out my Sharpie and carefully label it “Steve – Memorabilia – Attic.”

Jessica stands above me as I sit on the floor. Her eyebrows say, “Throw all this out.” I answer the unspoken statement.

“Do you know I have every letter, card, and note I have ever received?”

“Yes.”

“Every single one of them. The good, the bad, and the mundane.”

“I saw the boxes.”

“I’ll never be accused of not keeping them all.”

Her eyebrows ask another question.

“I have done it for this long, I can’t stop. Who has every letter for a lifetime? I am Pompey.”

She walks back to the kitchen to pack useful things.

Poor girl. She is younger than I am and will (in some far off future) have to sort through it all when I’m dead. Or maybe she will just throw it away.

Life has changed a lot in the last few months. Marriage, work, and now home. Everything is new and (if not different) at least changed.

I keep the things I keep because they were props and scripts from my life. Those acts are finished and the set has been changed and re-dressed. The boxes of “memorabilia” tell a story. A story often different than the one I tell. They are glimpses into a life LIVED. A life still being LIVED.

I am not Pompey. My relationship with myself and others is constantly growing, changing, developing. My relationship with Christ, God, and the church is doing the same. The story continues.

Sometimes it is whirlwind moments and sometimes slight breezes. And sometimes the air feels stagnant.

Sometimes things need to be evaluated and either thrown away, packed in a box marked “Memorabilia”, or LIVED into. Sometimes it is time to move on.

Boxes cannot be allowed to block our relationships nor stand in the way of the business of LIVING the life we are blessed with (and responsible for). Paths have to be cleared so growing, changing, and developing can continue to happen.

Now I need to go find my shoes.