ohbloodyhell8

In my continuing efforts to purge my house and soul from clutter, I went through a large storage box containing my college journals.  Oh, gentle reader, I’ve been blogging for years.  Just did it using paper and pen.  I refrained from reading every single page since the point was to purge, not walk down memory lane.  But the pages I did read included the typical stuff of a woman in her early twenties, friendships, guys, the really cool shoes at the mall that I couldn’t afford if I wanted to eat that week.  Obviously, if I had been Carrie Bradshaw, I would’ve had the shoes.  I am more practical and have never had her bankroll to be less practical with.

But there was also heart on those pages.  College was an interesting time for me with a lot of personal stuff going on, much like many college students.  The problems I faced then were the largest problems I had faced to date and I miss those types of problems now.  I sweated the small stuff.  Yet at the time, it was not the small stuff.  That’s the interesting thing about that approach-it isn’t small when you’re sweating it.  It is only in hindsight that you can realize it was the small stuff.  I think I have gotten better at keeping perspective about what is big and what is small now.  My husband and sons will always be big stuff, but some of the day-to-day involved in sharing a home together is small.  To remember that and handle the small stuff with grace and patience is the key (I’m clearly still working on that).

I couldn’t dispose of any of the journals, even though I am aware they’ll never do anything other than sit in the box, but I did purge the old tax records from over a decade ago and “IMPORTANT” papers that have no bearing on my life now.  It felt good to release them and the emotions tied in with some of them.   It’s weird to be reflecting back on some major life events and realizing they don’t really mean squat anymore.

What does mean something in my life are things like my oldest son having had a great week at camp, learning archery, and focusing during vespers.  It matters that my youngest is now six and had “a really fun birthday”.  I watched Michael Jackson’s Thriller with him last week-Michael is his “favorite singer”.  I got the same goosebumps I did when I first saw it in 1983.  My son got goosebumps and declared that he wants to be “one of those zombies for Halloween”.  My six-year-old loved the “stomach bug germs” we gave him for his birthday, some of the guests didn’t quite understand it, but who cares.  My oldest taught me the “Addams Family” prayer he learned at camp.

These are the things that are important now.  That and helping my sons not sweat the small stuff too much when it truly is small stuff, compared to the larger parts of their lives.  There are still paper journals in my life.  I write in a journal for each of my sons regularly, so when they are older they’ll have a written record of their small stuff that was so big.