My sister Lisa came last Saturday and helped me hang more pictures and shelves.  It is a job to get them level unless someone holds them up where I can make sure they are right.  And of course, on all the little Italian carved gold shelves, we put lots and lots of doo-dads that I hadn't yet found a place for.  She also hung two huge pictures over the fireplace and arranged more stuff on the mantle.

Stuff.  But it's mine, and I like to look at it and remember where I was when I bought it.  Or who gave it to me.  Cranberry glass.  Elfinware.  Turquoise swirl.  Royal Dalton.  Stuff.

I've been smiling ever since she went back home.  It's like I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  God willing, the next time I move it's going to be six feet down.  I can't go through this again.  In my life, I have moved 24 times.  Enough already.

This morning at Bible study, the subject was Abraham and his wife Sarah.  They lived in Ur, and God told Abraham to pack up his stuff, and all the people who would go with him, and move.  Move a long, long way off.  Knowing that he would never see his parents or home again, he obeyed.  He and Sarah took off into the unknown.

I can only imagine how Sarah felt.  What did she get to take with her?  What memories did she have to leave behind.  Imagine how sad that her mother must have been.  I am reminded of the homesteaders who headed West in covered wagons.  The hardships they endured.  The families they left behind.  They say that there was "stuff" scattered all along the wagon trails heading west, that had to be abandoned.  We women do like our stuff.

Jesus said, "Take...no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself.  Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." Matthew 6:24.  Or in my words: One day's trouble is enough for one day.  Everyday we have to decide what to leave behind. And I'm not talking about stuff.  Ken is gone, but I have to keep on living the rest of this life.  You can't stop living because things change.  But it doesn't say you have to like it.