Old Journals: Notes to Self

While convalescing from illness, I picked up one of my old journals to read through. There’s something magnetic about revisiting words you yourself have written, especially what was written years ago. What’s different? What’s remained the same?

This particular journal was given to me by my friend on August 1, 2001. I didn’t start writing in it until July 2002, and it covers the period when I was in seminary up to 2007, a year before I graduated. My friend died in 2006––the kind of death that makes anyone in the wake of tragedy both sad and mad. I wrote about my grief in a different journal.

Throughout this journal, quotes appear from Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s Gift from the Sea. A perennial classic, I have reread Gift from the Sea possibly more times than any other. And I’ve lost count of how many copies of this book I have given away.

Anne offered timeless insights and observations about life, using the few seashells she brought home from an extended vacation on Captiva Island.

There’s something sterling about her words. Inspiration and encouragement reaches readers like waves on the beach go out and come back in, washing sand beneath the feet.

I read, trying to imagine the life Anne lived married to Charles Lindbergh, the most famous man in the world during their lifetimes. Both Charles and Anne were pioneer aviators in the fledgling airline industry.

Anne did not let her privileged life or associated fame inhibit her soul. Through her writing, she soared above and beyond enormous tragedies, including the kidnapping and death of their 20-month-old son.

The headline news[1] placed a worldwide spotlight on this shy, circumspect woman who would never have sought to gain attention for herself. Riveting biographies of Charles and Anne show the complexity of their lives, their marriage, and the world each was born into. [2]

Thought that washed up on my beach: Shed

“Perhaps middle age is, or should be, a period of shedding shells; the shell of ambition, the shell of material accumulations and ambitions, the shell of the ego.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Gift from the Sea

Fifteen years ago, I marked that quote on the journal page, and wrote the word “SHED” next to it, thinking to form an acrostic. Today, I actually came up with words those four letters can stand for, because I need this message.

Stop Holding Everything Dear.

My husband said, ”I want you to hold me dear.”

“I’m thinking about stuff. Not people. Every thing can’t be dear or nothing is.”

Material accumulations can become burdens.

I admit how difficult it is for me to discriminate among things. It paralyzes me to have to decide whether to hang onto something that’s made it this far on my journey, as if that thing itself testifies to the reality of my experiences.

I still have the tooth extracted when I got braces in the eighth grade and the note from my orthodontist when he took the braces off. Geez. Who wants that?

And the stones I brought back from Israel, purportedly from the river bed where David slew Goliath. Hmmm.

My daughters tease me, referencing the Great Depression. “Wait! That wasn’t you.”

No, I didn’t live through that era, but what I did live through left me with a “scarcity mindset,” the term coined by Stephen Covey who wrote The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People.

While noting success in some areas, I struggle to let go of things I no longer need or use or have meaning. Because, you see, I might need that. And because every time I do need something and it’s here within reach, retrieving that item reinforces my habit.

My indecision spills over into other areas of life. I’m afraid of making a mistake.

My own words indict me as I find myself doubling back to face the same question again. And again.

Current Events

Timely, a friend sent me a book of essays, These Precious Days, by Ann Patchett. In her essay “How to Practice,” the author describes the “practice” of parting with things she no longer needed or used. She observed that “those things represented who I thought I would be but never became . . . [and other things] represented both the person I had been and no longer was.” What she kept represented “both the person I had wanted to be and the person I am.”

In what she referred to as her “archaeological dig,” she said, “I felt the space opening around me,” and instead of regret to see things go, she felt “lightness.”

I want that feeling of lightness too.

Moving Helps

With every move, whether from one house to another in the same town, or a move to another town, I have parted with loads of material possessions. Still, I possess inconceivable abundance compared to my chaotic childhood.

When my husband and I moved from Pampa to Coppell, we downsized houses. Our four kids were grown and gone. But the movers laughed when they started unloading the truck. “All this won’t fit in that house.”

Turns out, they were right. We rented a storage unit for six years. Lived without its contents; got rid of it all when we moved to Lubbock.

The Permanent Move

Which points to another Anne Morrow Lindbergh story, as told by her daughter Reeve.

After her mother died, Reeve and her siblings met at the storage unit in New Jersey that belonged to her parents. There, they discovered unopened wedding gifts, of all things! And then, to make this discovery even more dramatic, across the Bay in New York City, while they worked, the twin Trade Center Towers fell.

A graphic display of what’s perishable. People and things gone. The apocalyptic scene replayed on television screens everywhere, showing how life can change in an instant.

Circling back to what matters more than things

My mother did not leave much. She moved so often, discarding what others might value as she loaded her car with her books. I shared the backseat and floorboard with her books. I could not understand her detachment. I cried over my material losses.

Now that I find myself on the other end of life, I have more concern about leaving too much for someone else to have to deal with. While I do not want people traipsing through my house for an estate sale, no way to know my wishes will be honored.

This time as I “practice” shedding, I have unearthed an emotional aspect to my attachment to things. Dealing with that too, I’m making better progress and feeling lighter already.

Note to self: Continue your own “archaeological dig” and let stuff go.

[1] https://www.fbi.gov/history/famous-cases/lindbergh-kidnapping; https://www.historic-newspapers.com/blog/lindbergh-kidnapping-newspaper-analysis/

[2]A. Scott Berg’s Pulitzer Prize-winning biography Lindbergh, https://www.pulitzer.org/winners/scott-berg; Anne Morrow Lindberg, Her Life, by Susan Hertog, both books are excellent!