Farewell Ode to Bear

I have always considered myself the practical, no BS kind of parent. The parent who tosses things......whatever they may be and however treasured they are......if they lay in the floor for one too many days. If something gets missed at pickup time, and after they have been fairly forewarned, it is headed towards the trashcan. I really don't see myself as a parent that gets emotionally or sentimentally attached to any sort of thing since I firmly believe in a simplistic, minimal lifestyle.....though the heavy laden closets may argue that fact. The less the better.....not to mention how sick we all get of picking up crap absolutely everywhere. We're about to go overhaul the playroom since, at this point, it is nothing but a storage room full of long forgotten toys they string out everywhere. Course, I guess if they're long forgotten they wouldn't be strung out since stringing them out entails playing with them to some degree. I'm to the point where I just like sticks for toys. Kind of like the whole cardboard box theory.

But, I have long since known I greatly need to wean Aubrey from her beloved bear. The same bear she has slept with, drug around, traveled with, played with, formed an intense bond with and that she has intensely loved since she was old enough to hold something in her sleep. I attempted to wean her from it once before but grew weary of hearing her cry for it. So, in my not so patient, long suffering ways I handed it back over in an effort to have peace again.

But, as of almost a week ago now, Bear disappeared....and not from my doings. he got lost occasionally but always turned up a day or so later. The longest he went missing was for 3 days, which were sheer torture for Aubrey. But it is now going on a week and we have turned the house, Suburban, truck and outdoors upside down to no avail in our search for him. The kitchen trash can looms ominously in my mind as I envision Garrett and his overjoyed glee at chunking stuff in it. Surely not. If Bear does somehow miraculously appear it will indeed be the end of her days with him and he will be put away as a keepsake....but the more days that pass and the longer the clock ticks away the days the more I am coming to realize that we may never locate him. How sad that is to me. How is it that both parent and child can become so attached to something? And how is it that you can assume something so wrongly of yourself and are actually just as attached as your child? I always think in terms of being so minimalistic and always paring down and then something like this hits home and I realize how much needless baggage I hold onto. How much more free could I be in life without toting around the past or longing to hang onto it. I found it hard to grasp that knowing we may not find him was almost to me like losing a part of Aubrey. And, in all honesty, what would I have done with him had I just taken him away? I would've put him up on a shelf and kept him........savoring what? Aubrey? Why do people hang onto so much of the past? To bring it back?.......cause it'll never come back. To cherish it and make a god out of it? In all reality it'll just sit there and collect dust and Brad and I can look at it and do what? Take a jaunt down memory lane? Obviously, I would rather hold her sweet little body next to me and make the most out of every minute with her than to hold onto a raggedy pink bear sitting on a shelf that brings back memories of love, long ago days and maybe even some regrets of whatever things I wish I had done differently with her.

The Lord seemed to say to me through this....as I have found it probably more painful than Aubrey......to let go of the baggage. The excess stuff that weighs me down and inhibits me from becoming wholly devoted to the Lord...both spiritually and physically serves no purpose but to look back. I don't want to be one of those people always looking back and never, or maybe only slowly, moving forward. I want to be so free that I can recognize when a chapter in life is over and move on to the next incredible thing that is in store for us....without dragging all of the crap from every year before that with me. I find it comical as I remember Mother and I boarding Amtrak as we neared the end of our travels in getting to Maine. Up until NY we had baggage service like what is expected on an airline. But once in NY we retrieved our baggage and were then responsible for carrying it on with us for the remainder of our trip, when we reached New London, CT. And having both been somewhat vulnerable and susceptible to overdoing it we had no less than 5 heavy carryons and suitcases each. It was a horrific, hysterically funny travel nightmare. We were quite the sight. They even had to delay the train as we hauled it all on. It was embarrassing, to put it incredibly mildly.

I remember that and I remember the feelings that filled me while trying to drag it all onto the train. Feelings of being overwhelmed, of total exasperation, of having so much stuff that I could physically never get it on the train in time...which we didn't, feelings of regret of having dared think I wold need so much stuff. This girl, the same girl, who went on 4 international mission trips and even more national mission crusades and had taken the very minimum amount of clothing and fit it into 1 lone suitcase was now burdened by such excess that it was pretty much impossible to move from place to place. Between the two of us our baggage took up the entire back seat of our rental car and was stacked so obnoxiously high that we could not see out the rearview mirror. It ended up that we shipped 500.00 worth of it back home in an effort to enjoy our trip much more thoroughly and to be free of the weight we had inflicted upon ourselves by our stuff....our extra baggage.

Here I sit once more realizing how capable I am of weighing myself down with the details, the surplus, the sheer excess. And once again I am reminded not to burdened down by carrying emotional attachments and memories with me into the next phase of life. I hold the memories of days gone by closely within my heart but I give away freely in an effort to stay free and weightless as we journey from place to place with where the Lord takes us in every way......physically, spiritually and emotionally. I look at George Mueller and how is wife gave absolutely everything in her life away in order to move with him and follow him in every way. She gave up her right to hold onto her treasured hopechest of things and all of her possessions and together they stayed free of being weighed down by earthly possessions so that they were free to move wherever it is God instructed. I want to be that person. I want to be that free, that willing, that unencumbered by material possessions so that our family, however small it stays or large it becomes, is free to move wherever the wind of the Spirit blows us.

So it is that Aubrey is officially without her bear. She is growing in every way and this is just the start of a new chapter in her childhood as she grows and becomes more of an older girl and less of a little girl. She somehow, in an effort to understand the loss of her beloved bear, came up with a sweet story....however wrong it is. She declared that her bear went to heaven and God just took it up there because He needed it now. She informed us that God was sleepy and wanted her bear to sleep with. After God woke up Bear sat in his lap while He told stories to the little children in heaven. And so it is, according to Aubrey, that Bear sits in heaven on the lap of God and listens to stories with all of the other little children.