Letting Go and Moving Forward

For the Lucius family, this has been a crazy, busy week of packing and moving.

Now, that does not sound like a big deal except for the fact that we have lived in this particular home for almost two decades. And somehow, during those years, we had unknowingly managed to stuff a whole lot of personal belongings deep into the closets and storage areas of this place. As such, what appeared to be a reasonably orderly household had two decades of junk quietly hidden in every nook and cranny.

Add to this unbelievable accumulation of stuff the fact that we are downsizing from 2900 square feet of living space to 1455 square feet – basically half the size and space.

Don’t get me wrong! We are excited about this move and this downsizing. It will make life so much easier and quite a bit more manageable, especially for people of retirement age.

It seems that we are not alone in our efforts. Several of our friends around our age have also chosen to downsize as retirement nears. In fact, the well-known national (and international) moving companies of William C. Huff have been in the business of moving people since 1908, and their latest statistics show that downsizing is a trend that continues to grow. Their moving stats also show that Baby Boomers are leading the downsizing efforts, but also, lots of younger people are following suit.

In March of last year, The Journal of Housing Economics published a casual group study, “Retirement, housing mobility, downsizing, and neighborhood quality,” that investigated this trend. Though this study focused on European housing trends, the results were similar to those of William c. Huff Companies: Retirement (i.e., Baby Boomers) is the key driving factor behind downsizing.

Personally, I concur with both of these studies.

As we began to think about retirement, my husband and I kept coming back to three things: We wanted to be nearer to our grand-kids and be a part of their lives; we wanted to make our later years as financially sound as possible; and we simply wanted to make things easier and less complicated. So, after much prayer and dozens and dozens of unproductive visits to possible properties, we found the perfect spot.

In fact, as we stepped out of the car to look at this little farmhouse, my quiet, stoic husband said, “This is it! We are home.”

It was truly a life-changing moment where 46 years of marriage (made possible by our unwaveringly faithful God) ironically culminated in a place of peace and tranquility just about the size of our first real home in Tampa, Florida.

Doesn’t that sound precious and perfect? It was – until the moment that the papers were signed and the deed was filed. That was the moment when the panic set in. How were we supposed to literally half our possessions and fit them into this tiny home? It was almost impossible – except for the grace of God.

My sister, affectionately known as Chichi, teaches the children in our family that tough, impossible tasks such as our downsizing are like eating a gigantic elephant – successfully completed by chewing one bite at a time. Needless to say, she implored her elephant-eating tactics on me each Friday for the past couple of months as we sifted through 46 years of memorabilia. And I continually reminded her of how our grandson had first responded to her elephant analogy: “I think it is illegal to eat elephants, Chichi.”

Chichi laughed at me just as she had laughed at our grandson, then she promptly redirected me back to the enormous task at hand.

Her redirecting worked well until the day I had to pack our son Chris’s bedroom – the last one he occupied before leaving for college and eventually marrying. I know that sounds like a doable task, but since Chris now resides in heaven and not at his own home with his own precious family, the task took on much more meaning – and weight.

The thought of packing up all his high school and college memorabilia, his countless baseball uniforms, his various sports awards earned from preschool through college and beyond, as well as his various collections of baseball cards, rocks from every spot he ever visited, and his artwork was literally more than I could tackle.

So, of course, I procrastinated and avoided that dreaded task till the last possible moment. And my timing was anything but perfect.

As God in his infinite wisdom would have it, there was no one available to come help me eat the biggest elephant of all that day, not my husband, my sister, his wife, my friends, or even his high school coach who I called to inform that the task should have been his, since he was responsible for so many of the precious memories housed in that room.

Nope, the task was all mine. As Chris’s momma, I was left alone with the sorrowful task of putting away a lifetime of memories, and thus, facing the fact that our son would never have a room of his own in our house ever again.

But God is so good. Why do we ever doubt His love and care for us? How do we forget that it is in His strength alone that we face and overcome any obstacle in life – even the task of eating the huge elephant of grief. And He did it right before I had to face the task of packing Chris’s room.

The night before my packing absolutely had to be done, my husband found a shoebox filled with things Chris had evidently brought back from college with him and quickly stuck in a crazy, out-of-the-way place. As his daddy handed me that box, I knew God was giving us a treasured gift from our son.

I opened the lid and lovingly examined several little trinkets and pictures inside that shoebox, but then I spotted an envelope. I knew that was my gift because Chris cherished words written on paper as much as his momma.

The envelope came from his grandmother, with words of love and encouragement scribbled on the outside to go with the gift card my mom had given him so long ago.

But sure enough, there was a letter inside – from me, written to Chris the day before he left for college and tucked in his dorm room belongings for him to find after we left him in another state to play college baseball. He had kept it all those years, and I doubt he had a clue that my own words would speak truth and healing to me almost two decades later.

In the letter, I said lots of things about how much he meant to us, how proud we were of him as a man who sought hard after God’s own heart, and a dozen other messages of encouragement and love. But it was the end of that letter that hit me so hard.

I truthfully told my son way back in 2005 that it was almost impossible for me, as his mother, to let him go. But I admitted that holding him back would be pure selfishness on my part because God has such good plans for him, plans that I believed involved sharing Jesus with millions of people throughout the world. So, with that in mind, I formally released him in the name of Jesus to his destiny as a follower of Christ.

Wow. I formally let him go for his sake, my sake, and for the sake of countless other people whom he had yet to meet and impact for Christ.

As always, Chris was the one person in our family who uncannily managed to always speak absolute truth to me, truth anchored in the very Scriptures I had taught him his whole life. And here he was, speaking God’s truth to my heart one more time.

So, I shut the box and smiled. The elephant was gone, and in its place, I was offered the perfect peace of the spotless Lamb.

I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I had let go of Chris long ago, and packing his bedroom was merely one more chapter in his life well-lived for Christ.

But it is not the final chapter. Not at all. In fact, three separate times during my packing day, three different people relayed to me just how much Chris was still impacting people. Their stories only verified the one God has reminded me of the night before: Nothing that we surrender to Christ is lost.

The truth is, all my real treasures, including Chris, can only be saved if I surrender them to our Savior. And my old letter to Chris reminded me that I can let go of earthly treasures in anticipation of the greater, eternal treasures that God is holding for me in heaven.

As Matthew 6:19-21 so aptly puts it:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Yes, though the task was sad at moments, I was able to let go and pack Chris’s bedroom with the full knowledge that my son is waiting for me in a much better “room.” And I have been allowed the task of waiting here on earth to see just how many more heavenly treasures we can store up on earth by sharing the same message Chris shared with his students and athletes through spoken words, his devotional writings, and his daily walk: Surrendering our hearts and lives to Jesus is the only way to win in this life and the one to come.

It's a message that we all need to hear and heed. So, let go, today, and let God have His perfect way in our lives.

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