Overweight

For me, the hardest part of packing to move was sorting through all of our books.  Our new apartment doesn’t have room for all of them, so some had to be stored in my parents’ basement.

I love books.  I read them, remember them, decorate with them, and see them as a visual tapestry of my life.  I can often bring back a situation or time in my life by re-reading a certain book.  Parting with books makes me feel like I am saying goodbye to a friend.

But moving from a house with a basement to an apartment meant that I had to make some choices about books.  Slowly, Adam and I began to sort through our books over the past few months.  First we pared down all of the duplicate books we bought in seminary.  After five years, I was finally ready to admit that we probably didn’t each need a copy of every book that we had ever used in our M.Div classes.  We shared many of those books with a friend who is currently in seminary, and donated the rest to the library. 

Next, we went over the other books in our library and I reluctantly admitted that we could probably let go of my biology textbook from college…and so on.  We reduced the books we were taking from six bookshelves to three, and I patted myself on the back for being so judicious. 

Fast forward to moving day, part one.  It is past midnight, and the movers have just finished packing and loading everything that we are taking into their truck.  They tell Adam that we are probably going to be over the weight that they had originally estimated, because they didn’t think that we would really have so many books.  How overweight were we?  One thousand, five hundred pounds.  That’s right—we really do have a lot of books. 

I am thrilled to be sitting in my new book-lined office, but being overweight for our move has made me think.  Besides books, what else do I insist on carrying around?  What do I take with me in life that I don’t need as much as I think I do?

It’s a fine line, because our most helpful and harmful qualities are often so closely intertwined.  Packing lots of books helps me to feel at home, but it can also weigh me down.  Knowing what you want can be impressively decisive, or it can turn into paralyzing perfectionism.  Being open to change sometimes helps you to discover unexpected opportunities, and sometimes causes you to lead a somewhat rootless existence, going along with whatever catches your fancy at the moment. 

All this is to say that there is more than one way to interpret the choices that we make, more than one way to decide what to hang onto, and what to let go.  How do you make those choices?  What guides you?  How do you decide if something is a blessing or a burden?

As for me, I’m glad I brought all the books that I did.