Tag: honesty

  • Simply Honest

    05.13.11 | Comment?

    by Susie

    So today’s topic is simplify.

    I’m going to be honest: I’ve been struggling to write this for a good week now. My original plan was to have something much more thoughtful, exploring simplification through its cultural implications and then planning out how to apply it to my own life. With an air of hopeful optimism, it’d be an encouraging and self-gratifying way of exploring the subject. But it wouldn’t be honest.

    Just in running my errands today, I’ve thought of at least twenty things I wanted and legitimately considered purchasing.  So I’m scrapping the original plan and am just going to say that truthfully, I really struggle with the idea of simplifying. I’m not happy to admit it, but it’s who I am. We live in a material world and I, unfortunately, am a guilty material girl.

    I’ve been on multiple mission trips around the U.S. and Mexico, witnessing poverty in our own backyard, but it doesn’t make me stop wanting those needless things. The experiences had put things into perspective for a time . . . but it never made the desire for material gratification go away indefinitely. The clothes, the tickets, the technology, the shoes — all this just makes me aware of how little I earn and how my life would be so much better if I had that more disposable income.

    Not to say that I have much disposable income now. Being in my mid twenties and hired on to a large corporation by contract . . . I’m often made aware of how low I am on the professional totem pole. But I’ve realized that it isn’t necessarily my habits of self-control that are limiting my spending habits. It’s my income. Or lack thereof.

    I’ve definitely matured enough to understand that material things don’t provide real or lasting satisfaction. Yet I still yearn for them. Why is this? It’s much deeper than simply “keeping up with the Jones’s” — at least in my life. There’s no one I feel I have to compete with. And yet it’s not on the deepest level of self-worth: I don’t feel as though my worth is in any way tied to these things. Put simply, I want them because I want them. So how do you control that? And when does it get to a point where you don’t feel like you have to deeply consider every purchase?

    These are questions I know I can’t answer now and certainly not within 500 words. So I’ll just say what I know: When I focus on the things that matter — family, friends, community, loving those around me and being in relation with Christ — the material wants and financial woes simply melt away. I realize these internal struggles are signs of something bigger going on inside of me; like Richard Dahlstrom said: “ . . . downstream problem, upstream solution.” I pray that God will give me the insight to see the heart of the issue and the strength, humility, and grace to address it.

    There are so many who live on so little. Being a people with so much, why is it that we are so dissatisfied? Why is it so difficult to simplify? I’m not sure if you’re able to connect with my experience, but I pray that this time of simplifying will help you discover more about what your struggle is and what living simply looks like in your life.