If you had taken me aside on December 31, 2016 and said: Hey, Deb! This time next year you’ll be living in an RV! I would have rolled my eyes and continued making cookies in my newly remodeled kitchen.
Yet we awoke this New Year’s Day – and the previous 47 days – in a 5th Wheel. It was a quick journey from our beloved home of 23 years to this Big Metal Box – or BMB, as I sort of affectionately call it. The reason? A day of infamy in our beautiful Sonoma County – a perfect storm of windstorm and firestorm:
- 42 people killed
- 8,889 homes and structures destroyed
- Over 160,000 acres burned
Evacuating 3 a.m. October 9, 2017. Coffey Park, just behind our home, ablaze.
Overnight, tens of thousands of people were going to need places to live. Sam and I had met with our real estate agent a couple of weeks before the catastrophe to have them look over our home and suggest any improvements before putting it on the market in 2018. Why? To build or buy a smaller place on a little property further West County. To downsize, decumulate, recalibrate.
I don’t remember whether Sam or I first voiced the idea. I do remember our home (which had been spared) suddenly being leased – furnished – for a year and our guaranteeing to be out in 2 1/2 weeks. There was the purchase of the new RV. (Wow, that happened fast.) Going through every box, every cupboard and closet with a speed and unsentimental ruthlessness that would make Marie Kondo proud. Pick up a tchotchke, tell it how much you appreciate the joy! it has brought into your life, and put it tenderly but firmly in the thrift store box. Decide what to leave in the house, what to store in the house, and what to take. Quickly.
What to take was pretty easy. Not much, when one goes from 2,500 square feet to 314.
Sam, meanwhile, was preparing a pad for the BMB behind our son’s home on their one acre property in the charming community of Forestville. It all seemed so doable! So out of our box!
And that is how we awoke on New Year’s Day 2018 living in a big metal one.
There are lessons. Here are a few:
- A catastrophe of the scope experienced here with the destruction of more than 5,000 homes will cure you of
complaining. I sit out here in the country with some of our stuff, with the rest of our stuff safe. I think about the Red Cross issuing sifters so families could go through the ashes and salvage – something. In those early days, there was an otherworldly shell-shock. They would pull out their phones to share photos of their homes, describe them in detail. Gone. - So when the propane or water runs out, or when we’re making do with a 4-ft closet or a 4 minute shower, I think about the sifters. I think about the thousands of people where I live who wake up every day still trying come to grips with all they’ve lost. And any inclination to whine evaporates.
- Occasionally you hear, It’s surprising what you can live without. Well, it’s true. The propensity for human beings to accumulate is potent. From cradle to grave we want things. Living in a BMB is not curing me of wanting things; it is slowly inoculating me against wanting too many of them. Granted, it is currently much easier simply because there is little room to put more stuff. This is not a Costco lifestyle. It does encourage being more selective, cautious, and – dare I say it – wise about adding things to my life.
In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus cautions about the distraction of too much accumulation. He follows up with encouragement to have a “good eye”, a healthy eye. Discern when the desire for more stuff is interfering with your devotion and service to Christ.
So we’re starting the New Year living an unexpectedly scaled-down life in the BMB, happy enough in this season with less.
How would decumulating even just a little help you with spiritual focus this year?