materialism

Last year when Judah and I bought our townhouse, we didn't have to do much downsizing.  We only moved in order to have a washer and dryer with a lower monthly housing bill.  We bought this townhouse and moved laterally into an owned space with two floors instead of one.  And less closet space.

I kept all of Judah's clothes from when he was a baby.  I put them in totes, boxes, and bags and gave away some of the ones he never wore at all.  But I held on tight to the little sleepers and onesies and baby jeans.

Just before it was time to move to our new home, a friend offered to help pack up some of our belongings at the house while I was at work one day.  I put her on the task of sorting Judah's baby clothes and vacuum packing them in Ziploc storage bags.  When it was all said and done, there were probably five or six huge sealed bags.  And those bags made the move with us to the new house.

Some people made fun of me for this.  But I couldn't bring myself to part with the clothes.  I felt like these clothes, and the holding onto them, symbolized my hope in a growing family.  These clothes, and the saving them, meant I was speaking more children into my future.  I would have another baby one day, those five or six bags said.

Some people made fun of me for it and said, "well what if your next child is a girl?" And everyone said, "well of course you'll have more children".  Still I am baffled by their certainty. Because I don't know this to be the truth at all.  Im paralyzingly afraid it's not.

We stored those bags in Judah's closet until about four months ago.  Each bag weighs upwards of 20 pounds and their weight was too much for the wire storage shelves.  I was afraid the bags would fall on Judah or break something on the way down, so I sent all of the bags home with Judah's dad.

I'll kill you if you lose these, I threatened him.  I watched him take them to his friend's car and repeated myself.  If you give these away, I'll destroy you.

He knew I was serious.  But he had more storage space than I did.  I had to let them go.

It's December now.  And we haven't seen or heard from Judah's dad in six weeks or so.  That's a long story I don't care to tell you, except for: fatherlessness is a cycle my heart is devoted to breaking.  Biology doesn't make you a father, and the cycle will be broken my fatherless sons who don't abandon their children because of the men who chose them.  And those men in our society who will be asked to step up to father children who are not their own: to those men, my heart and all my respect extends.

~

My sister and her husband are having another baby boy in April.  She will need more baby boy clothes.  And as I thought about this the other day, my stomach dropped.

Literally.  Gut wrenched.

I didn't have them anymore.

Non-communication burns a bridge.  Cavernous space is created every day you fail to communicate with someone, and in this case, the particular space created is healthy and needed and will be to our benefit.

But he has our clothes.

My mind tried to wrap around this simple fact, because bigger than the baby clothes, I couldn't believe I had trusted him with my hope.

I had given him the symbol of my trust and hope of a growing family and let him drive away with it in someone else's car.  And now to get it back, my only option would be to bridge the gap created by a gracious God who knows all we needed was the distance.

And I've just never felt so materialistic in my life.

I damn near panicked.

What had I done.

I struggle a lot with the life I've built for my boy.  For the lack of structure and role models, and the making-ends-meet-survival-mentality we've both seemed to adopt.  I can't buy real Christmas presents this year.  And it took me four months to figure out how to get him to sleep again.  We have temper tantrums, strange eating patterns, and still no family photos. Now I've lost his baby clothes.

Now, when he's six and a half feet tall, grown, graduating college, or when he has babies of his own, I may not have the tiny clothes he wore when I brought him home.

And that feels like a failure.

It's not worth closing the distance, however.  And had you laid the decision out for me on paper, asked for space in exchange for clothes, I'd give them to you ten fold.  But ... I didn't willingly or knowingly make this choice.  This decision.

And I'm trying to come to grips with it: the loss of my metaphor.  Hold on to threads of hope, which if we are being honest, were frayed anyway.  Weather worn and thin from the pulling.