I landed on the hammock when I got home today and stared at my beautiful roommate and our beautiful porch table. I love my roommate, but this isn't about her. It's about the table. I like that table, I do. It's a pedestal table, wooden, with delicate details carved into it. Our porch is this bastion of green, flowers, peace, and comfort. We live out there. We live around this table.

As I've walked through our house the past few weeks I've touched things and let go of things, asked myself the question "Do I need this?" And usually the answer is no, but sometimes the answer is "No, but I love it." And there the battle begins--I don't need it, but I love it, and how much do I love it and does that mean I ought to definitely keep it or definitely rid myself of it? (No one can accuse me of not putting enough thought into my actions...just saying is all.)

I haven't ever really gone deeper than want, need, love and do I have to? Today though, I looked at that table, the table I wanted for our front porch and found under an antique dealer's pile of junk and gave him forty bucks for, and I said to myself "What's the root of wanting to keep that table?" And the root was fear, surprisingly. Fear that I'd never find another table just like that (likely), or that I'd never find another sort of table like it, but as cheap (unlikely), or that by getting rid of the table I would be tableless for the rest of my life (very unlikely). Once I got here it was easy to decide, nope, not keeping the table.

See, a few weeks ago I sat in the living room of a family I love and they talked to me about loving things more than God. And, while I pride myself on being very unattached to material things, I realized I've let the fear of not having things overtake the fear of not loving God--I've been more consumed with building a home, than being a dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, more desirous of beautiful colors, than appreciating the master creator, and more attached to my savings account balance than to a great provider. It's a sneakier thing than I think and every day I'm more and more struck by my attachments. I feel in some ways like this season is a season of shedding skin, ideas, things, dreams, all the things that have crowded out Just Jesus.

So, anybody want a hardwood pedestal table?