Today, I opened the last box from my move.  I had been putting it off because I knew what was in it.  Shoes.  Little glass shoes.  Monopoly token metal shoes.  Indian beaded shoes.  Dutch carved wood clogs.  There are even leather loafers, ballerinas and booties. All of them very, very tiny.

When I was seven, an older cousin gave me her collection of little glass shoes.  About seven or eight of them.  After that, I added to them.  When I went somewhere, I would sometimes find and buy a tiny shoe.  It was something to take home and it was small and easily transportable. And they didn't cost much.  Except for a pair of sterling "shoe" cuff-links.  But I figured that Ken or I might possibly wear those.  We didn't.

As I unwrapped them, I counted.  Ninety-seven.  You see why I put off opening the box.  I have cornered the market.  They are really hard to find anymore.   And what would I do with more little shoes?  They are totally useless things.  I would love to find someone in the family that would like to have them.  But until that happens, I will put them in glass display boxes on the mantle.  That should keep me busy for a few days.  And remind me of my idiocy.

Just think of all the things we have bought in our lifetime that are useless, silly, temporary and eventually discarded.  I tell the ladies in my Bible class that: "You want it when you are twenty.  You charge it when you are thirty.  You pay it off when you are forty.  And when you are fifty, you wonder what in the world possessed you to buy it.  So.......in your sixties, you get rid of it all." 

As we age, stuff doesn't matter much.  It's a shame that we can't learn that in our twenties.  Simplify, simplify.  Would anyone out there like 97 tiny shoes?

"Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust corrupts and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven...for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." Matthew 6:19-21