Later, the hoarding continued in the name of good stewardship and preparedness. What if someday the other three of this item that I have in storage somehow get broken, and I need this fourth one? I won’t want to have to buy it. (And let’s not forget that I also feel so sentimental about this one. After all, didn’t the so-and-so’s give it to us back in 2003?)

But lately, I’ve gotten uncomfortable with the hoarder in me. Our recent five-week trip proved to me that I really don’t need all this stuff. I’m quite happy without it, and actually surprisingly a little less happy with it. Since coming home to all those clothes we didn’t pack, I’ve been buried under laundry because when we have access to all those clothes, we tend to wear them, and then I have to wash them. Since coming home to all the toys we didn’t bring, hours out of each day are spent “motivating” the children to put their messes away because when they have access to all those toys, they play with them, and then I have to make them put all those toys away. Suddenly, I feel oppressed, like maintaining all my stuff is taking over my life. I want to have less. I really, really want to have less. I even resolved to have less, to live my whole life packing light. I looked around my house with narrowed eyes, ready to be ruthless. But then I came up against something. It was a little girl in elementary school finding kinship and affection in a pile of trinkets. It was a sentimental young mother with an inconveniently good memory who kept thinking of all the stories surrounding each dust-covered, long-unused item. It was a self-sufficient Pioneer wannabe with her eyes on “someday.” It was me and all the ways I had become a hoarder. (OK, yes, technically, I should have said, “it was I,” but that sounds lame. Anyway, getting back to hoarding . . .)

I would like to be free. I realized something. Hoarding = Not Sharing. And not sharing is not good. It’s the selfish, greedy, faithless lifestyle of a person who is not living like God is real. If I believe that God is my Provider, if I believe that God is my Friend, if I believe that God is my Satisfaction, then I won’t cling to my stuff. My hands will be open. I’ll be happy to share. In John the Baptist’s famous speech to the multitudes that came to be baptized by him, the example of fruit worthy of repentance wasn’t preparedness or honoring the past by setting up your own dust-gathering garage shrines to all the nice people who’ve given you stuff–it was sharing.

O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father: for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees: every tree therefore which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. And the people asked him, saying, What shall we do then? He answereth and saith unto them, He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise. –Luke 3:7b-11

If I have (just for example) six strollers in my garage, and I’m only using one, and there is a crisis pregnancy center in my area with strollers on their wishlist of things the struggling moms in their program always need, then I have no business letting those strollers sit in my collection. And it had better not matter that one of those strollers I never use was the one I bought back when my belly stretched round for the very first time and I wandered the aisles of Toys ‘R Us all giddy with dreams and nesting. And it had better not matter that the car seat that matches that stroller is in our van right now to cradle baby number five and “someday” I might want to use the whole “travel system” again. Whatever. There are women out there with bellies stretched round who have no strollers and for whom nesting is a sad and desperate situation.

It’s time to go through my stuff and ask myself not just the old classic, “Is this useful or beautiful?” but also, “If this were Jesus’ house (which it is), what would Jesus do with all this stuff?” What would Jesus hoard? Getting free from my stuff is not just about reclaiming space and the time in my day that it takes to maintain the stuff. It’s also about getting free from a great big idol and making a conscious choice to live like a Christian and replace all the misplaced hope and security from my past with faith in God.

*Technically, I’m not an only child because the Lord finally blessed my parents with another baby when I was going on twelve, but I spent my early childhood without siblings, so there were a lot of years when I WAS an only child.

Escape only prolongs the trouble. I took this trip to help distract me from my hormones, and in the process I was separated from much of what distracts me from the stresses of ordinary life. I totally went through withdrawal. When life got stressful like it so often did on those mornings when my husband was “at work” in the van (he’s an independent consultant and took his office on the road), and I was in the trailer with five children trying to get us ready for they next day’s drive, I found myself desperate to run away to my basement chocolate stash, or check my e-mail or Facebook or read some encouraging blog. Only I couldn’t do it. I had no Internet at times like those, and no time to use it even if I’d had it. And there was no chocolate and no quiet place to go, just four small walls and five needy people. And I had to learn to be in the moment, to take a deep breath and just face whatever chaos was happening no matter how much I wanted to escape. And you know what? Gradually, I felt less and less like I needed to escape. All that distraction that I have at home is just letting me avoid the hard parts of life. But if I actually have to deal with them, they eventually improve. Imagine that. If I face up to my children’s whining, they whine less. If I face up to their disobedience, they disobey less. If I face up to their bickering, they bicker less. Running away felt good at the time, but it never solved anything, and all the problems just festered.

Your relationships are only as good as they need to be. I wasn’t the only person escaping. We all had ways of retreating from each other when life got unpleasant, and you would have thought those little safety valves would make us all better able to handle life together. And they did, just like training wheels “help” you ride a bike. You think you’re doing great, tooling around the block, but really, if you’d get up your nerve, take off the training wheels, and skin your knees a few times, you’d actually start going places. That’s exactly what we did. By cramming our whole family into a very small space, forcing everyone to interact all the time, we took off our training wheels. We skinned our knees a whole lot, especially in the first week, dealing with our lack of balance, our selfishness, our moodiness, our flaccid self-control. But as time went on, our relationships began to smooth out a little. We found new strength for kindness and patience, new fun in being together.

Our house is NOT too small. Epiphany! Our family of seven can live quite happily in a 23-foot travel trailer. It’s even good for us. After all my fretting about how “small” our house is, we are actually more of a family when we live in less space. So what’s the real problem? Our stuff. We have way too much stuff. We’re in bondage to it. It takes so much effort to clean it, fix it, organize it, store it, get it out, and put it away that our lives are consumed by it. We realized on this trip that in terms of time and attention, our stuff is our top priority in life, above our family, and that is completely backwards. And when we pared down far enough to fit in a van and camper for five weeks, we discovered that we didn’t miss our stuff at all. I never gave my collection of 16 vases in assorted sizes a second thought. I didn’t long for all the giant baby equipment I’m emotionally attached to because I was given it all as gifts. (We did take this portable baby swing that I bought for the trip at the resale shop and which I highly recommend instead of a full-size swing and separate bouncy chair.) I didn’t miss the 97% of my wardrobe that I didn’t pack. Three nursing dresses (in dark colors so they wouldn’t show stains) were washed and rewashed throughout the trip, and clothes for the seven of us fit quite comfortably into one tiny camper closet, one cupboard, and one drawer. The kids didn’t even miss their toys. They each had one doll or stuffed animal and a bunch of shared books, and instead of being slain by boredom, our kids rediscovered the ancient playthings made by God himself: sticks and rocks and leaves and flowers and work. Yup, our kids rediscovered helping. When your options are twiddle your thumbs or sweep the camper, sweeping the camper sounds like a brilliant choice. The kids actually fought over the privilege.

Fresh goats’ milk tastes good. OK, this may not sound like it really fits with the other lessons learned on this trip, but it was actually one of those great moments of clarity when our new friends that we met at a house church in Tumalo, Oregon, presented us with glasses of their goats’ milk. I took a deep lets-not-hurt-anyone’s-feelings breath and carefully sipped what I was certain was going to be impossibly, disgustingly goaty, and instead tasted . . . milk, really good, creamy milk. We have dreamed for years about having our own milk, but we thought we’d have to get a cow, which seemed daunting, but we looked at our friends’ two happy backyard goats and thought, we could do this.

Now we’re home. I had wanted just to be distracted, to come back sane and ready to face the dinner dishes without sobbing. I never imagined I’d come back with such a different outlook on space and stuff and family or with completely revamped dreams for our future. I have a feeling that the wild adventure is yet to come.