THE SIMPLE LIFE
AN ABUNDANCE OF SIMPLICITY
Published October, 2001
It started as an imaginary game. Phase One of a new home development sprouted out of the dry desert ground just minutes from my husband’s job on a large research farm near the small town of Maricopa. Staring at the wood studs and up through the open rafters of the future model homes, we replayed the popular billboard slogan for each other. “If you lived here, you would be home by now.”
Not that Vic minds the forty minute drive to work. He has grown to love the slow transition from the clogged streets of the city, southward past the last vestiges of Tempe farmland, a right turn around Dugan Dairy, and then a quiet drive into the wide open spaces of desert. It’s a literal transition from clutter to space, an unraveling of mental tension and a reconnection with the earth as God created it. Breathing is easier; thinking is possible.
Still, we thought…we could live just down the road from work. We could actually live in the open spaces away from city smog. No more hustling and bustling. And our imaginations took over.
What if…what if we sold our BIG home and bought a little home, we asked each other. What if we sold all of our unused possessions, gave them away–starting over again in a little way just like we had started thirty years ago as fresh college graduates. Just the thought of having rooms filled with emptiness seemed to release a major burden for each of us.
Our imaginations took flight. Over the weekend, laying on our backs in the living room, we surveyed the four walls covered with baskets, paintings, and cabinets of trinkets. What did we absolutely need in our “new smaller home?” What could we live without? At the kitchen table, we mentally cleaned cupboards. One set of dishes, a spice rack, and our pots and pans—was that really all we needed to eat healthy meals?
On trips out of town this summer, we began to imagine our hotel rooms as home. One bed, two chairs, a small desk, dresser and bathroom. We felt complete. Returning home, one trip after the next, slowly the tension between the true clutter of our life and the open spaces we envisioned began to gnaw at my heart. Did I really have to dust hundreds of knick-knacks for the rest of my life? Did we really have to move just to rid ourselves of life’s complexities and distractions?
Then suddenly, as if God could no longer stand my complaining, His gift arrived. After months of what-if, we have acquired an empty room, a patch of carpeting surrounded by four walls, a practice space of nothingness. Our daughter moved into an apartment, taking her furniture with her. Yet, what might have been a cause for sadness and loss punctuated by the absence of her lovely smile has blossomed into possibilities for all of us. A room of space, a desert room of openness and breathing and thinking—right here, under our very roof.
We are of one mind. This will be our desert preserve, a guarded space. Last night we moved in a bookcase and arranged the shelves with favorite titles. I spread out the Moroccan rug from our daughter’s travels, and a lamp stand points three beams of light up and down across the books and onto the quilted pillows in the corner.
In the darkness of the late evening, we laid back on the Moroccan rug and let our eyes adjust to the glow of the streetlights filtering into the room and across the walls. Twinkling above, florescent stars made me smile. They seemed bigger now, without the furniture. They had space to play against, to fill the room with their warmth. Vic’s toes wiggled, a detail that struck me in the open space of the room. I reached out for his hand, and he squeezed mine back in response.
Custom dictates that a room without furniture is incomplete. But Vic and I know that would spoil God’s gift. In a world filled with man-made creations, God has given us back the simplicity of life, a room of space for listening, an expanse of stillness where He has room to fill the spaces for us, to tickle our toes and squeeze our hands, to whisper and remind us. Be still, and know that I am God. [Psa 46:10 NIV]