Stuff

It is weird having my stuff on a boat, in storage and at our parent's house (thanks). It has made me think about our need for stuff. We need to have things, we always have had and probably always will. It is not having things that I have thought about it is what things to have that I have been thinking about.

We were given a weight limit to Kwajalein (which is small and you can go over but it costs money) and the restrictions on storage. It was a good exercise to go through all that we own and ask the question do we need this to be successful for the next few years. We found out that we have a lot of stuff that we either don't need for want and we realized again that certain things don't need to be ours (we can use the Kwajalein's warehouse) and certain things need to be ours(pots, pans, clothes, beds, couches). We also talked about how different people need different things (our children need the most).

It reminded me that we need to use things and that we can treasure things but we should guard against being attached to strongly to things. The old adage "It's only stuff" has a lot of wisdom. One of the dangers in a materialistic society like ours is that we can become enslaved by our stuff. In a very real way our stuff can own us and not us own our stuff. I am thankful for the reminder of the proper place for stuff.