Unpacking

Several years ago, when my Nana moved out of her home in Florida and into a much smaller apartment, my dad boxed up much of her china, into a sturdy wooden shipping container that has traveled around the world with oceanographic equipment. He also packed it into rubber maid footlockers when he ran out of space in the wooden box.

It sat in my parents' basement, waiting for me to have space for it, and for me to get married.

Then several years ago when I bought my house, it was all moved from my parents house in Michigan, to my basement and attic in Kentucky, and there it sat.
It sat boxed up, with the hope that one day, I would get married, because in my mind, single people don't have fine china. And if they do have it, they certainly don't have it out on display, or use it.

For 5 years it sat. Sometimes when I would go down into my basement to do laundry, I would look over at the large wooden box and wonder, what all was inside. I knew what my grandmother's china looked like, but I also knew that there had to be other things, based on the shear size and number of containers.

My mom would occasionally ask questions like "how many dinner plates are in that set of Nana's china?" or "what is the pattern number?"

I would say "Mom, I have no idea, it's all boxed up in the basement."

Over the course of last summer and fall, as God really worked on my heart and reminded me that the lies that had been fed to me about singleness were absolutely untrue, and holding me back from really living, I decided that it was time to unpack, both my life and my china.

While my parents were visiting in December we unpacked the actual China from the large wooden shipping crate.

We discovered that the china is one of the rare Noritake patterns with no number.

We even used them for our Christmas dinner

Over this past weekend, with some time off, I was able to organize the china on a small shelf that was given to me by Nana several years ago.

Then I started on the two footlockers in the attic. I had no idea what they contained, and I was curious. I have always loved my Nana's taste and style. Her things are always classic and timeless.

As I sat there unwrapping one piece after another, I realized that the act of taking the stuff out of the closet and unpacking it to enjoy was a quite good metaphor for how I had been living my life. If you had asked me 10 years ago where I would be today, what I would have described to you would have not in anyway looked like the life I am actually living. I had felt for a long time like there were so many things that I would like to be doing, but doing them alone just didn't seem like it was worth it. So sometimes, instead of enjoying the beauty of the life God has laid out for me, I was hiding it in a closet, where no one could see it. Though these lies were all my own, I don't think it helped at all that I had people in my life feeding it, but that is a story for another day.

I decided over a year ago to start unpacking my life, to start doing things I enjoy, even if it means doing them alone. I joined a triathlon club. I started going to a new church, which I had needed to do for a long time, but the thought of finding a new church alone, well it's not fun. I went on hikes by myself. I even went to a concert by myself, which let me just say, was HUGE. And yes people did stare at me at the concert of a popular Christian artist, one couple kept turning around, completely obvious, wondering when my friends or significant other would show up, so obvious they even asked.

And I decided this weekend that it was time to unpack the trunks in my attic. The ones I was sure contained beautiful things, that were sitting there untouched, waiting for my life to change, so that they could be enjoyed, the way society tells us we are suppose to enjoy them.

Yes the process of unpacking was messy. My Dad is an expert packer. There were bags and bags of tissue paper, packing paper, bubble wrap, and shredded paper. The shredded paper was hard to contain.
It was very similar to the process of unpacking my life. It was something that I absolutely had to do, but there was a lot of stuff that had to be taken off before the good stuff underneath could come out. And there were some things that had be taken out to the trash, or in other words eliminated. But in the end, it was totally worth it, because this is a small sampling of what was packed inside.