and what about giving up things?

I miss Mozzarella Cheese. 

I miss having my household of things around me, orderly, giving structure to my world and setting boundaries for my brain. I miss being able to bring out my dishes and cook for someone, or being able to pull out my compilation of First Aid supplies and fix up any cat scratch, dangly toenail, or roadburn. I miss understanding the jokes that people make when I'm talking to them, and I miss having guyfriends. You wouldn't think that guyfriends would be such a taboo, but they really are. Every time I go to a social function, there are groups of guys talking to each other and groups of girls talking to each other. I am not good at being friends with girls. I never have been. Not even in English. And I detest small talk.

I miss the depth of the relationships that I have at home. I miss being able to walk up to my best friend at church, and, knowing almost all of her life history as it coincides with mine, ask her any easy question and thus begin a conversation that lasts two hours, through lunch, and into an Audrey Hepburn movie and a nap on the floor with tea. 

I miss touchy people who like to hold my hands and lean on me and let me put my head on their shoulders. I miss cuddling with my roommate, and I miss my prayer team. I miss ice cream with fudge ripples, and cold water.

I miss being able to text people that I already know, to make plans that I can understand, in a city I know how to get around. I miss spontaneously inviting people over to my house. I miss being a hostess and feeding all my boys fresh bread with my grandma's Raspberry Jam. I miss having my books on my shelf like sentries, every title holding a story in words and a story in memories, wrapping up in a binding each point in my life that was marked by its reading. I miss my tea kettle and the little sound it makes that only I can hear that lets me know when the water is exactly the right temperature. 

It is okay to miss those things. It is not bad to recognize a blessing and to notice its absence when it's gone. 

I've been reading a blog called Kisses from Katie, and I think I have been more challenged by her posts than by anything in my life. In one of her posts, she talks about feeding/clothing the poor and how Jesus says that those who believed in him and those who did not will be separated in the end of time. Matthew 25:41-46 says, 

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.' And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." 

I have never actually contemplated these words. I cannot escape them. I am very afraid, because I cannot ignore them, and I don't like what I think they mean. I've been trying to escape it ever since I read it, and I don't think I can any longer.  There's always this tug-of-war in me when I see someone who needs and I know I have a little extra. I think of exactly how much I have, and how much is coming soon, and my budget, and things I would like to buy, and the list of expenditures that certain amounts of my money are allotted to, and I rationalize my way out of just handing the poor man all my nickels and dimes, or ten of my cans of string beans that are in my back seat, or the loaf of bread I just bought and my jar of peanut butter. Why? Why do I think my way out of giving someone what I have? Why do I redefine "a little extra" every time there is an opportunity to be to another person what God has been to me? 

[[side story: I can't even tell you how many times I've seen someone on the side of the street and I've looked away. We have all done it. There's been a time in every single one of our lives when each of us has seen someone who had less and we chose to look away, and I will be the first to say: that is wrong. Who gave me the right to refuse to look at someone, simply on grounds that I knew they were asking for something that I didn't want to give? After all, what are they really asking for? Money would be useful, yes. Employment? Shelter? What if really every person on the corner of the street is just asking for a little dignity? What if all they want is for someone to look at them and See them? 
There's a lady from a band that did a Ted Talk, and her name's Amanda Palmer. The talk is called "The Art of Asking," and while I may not agree with her whole lifestyle, she makes a very good point. She talks about the unspoken moment of recognition and appreciation that would occur every time she would lock eyes with a donor and hand them a flower. After having watched the video three or four times and contemplating its contents, I think really what she's talking about is dignity. How dare I, even if I have nothing to give, avert my eyes and steal away the dignity of a person created in the image of God?]]

But I'm really not even talking about Dignity and Homeless people and Making Eye Contact. All of these things that I miss, they are good things. But they are not the most important. In the New Testament, there a several times that Jesus addresses the words, "Follow me," to someone. There are two commands that Jesus used most often in conjunction with that phrase, and they are used an equal number of times. The first, we hear about all the time: "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and Follow me." The second is not so common to hear: "Sell all you have and give to the poor. Then you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me."
Now, this is a very haunting thing to me. Because I have heard all my life about taking up our crosses and bearing them and how that means we aren't supposed to sin, or that there's a certain burden that we'll have our whole lives. 
[[Among the list of things I have heard mentioned as or thought of as crosses that some people just have to bear are: ugliness, bad marriages, obesity, poverty, illness, faulty church theology, and dead end jobs. Are you kidding me?! But that is a rant for another day.]] 

But I have never once heard a pastor preach on how Jesus said that to follow him, 

something necessary for perfection (like He said to the rich young ruler) was that we sell all we have and give to the poor. 

I said I was afraid. I am afraid because there is something in those verses that is entirely absolute. 1 John 3:17 says, "But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him?" Now, Jesus talks an awful lot about how if we love Him, we'll do what He says. All my life, I have had this backwards. Somehow in my head, this turned into: "Do all these things so that everyone will know you love me," instead of what He meant, which was: "Fall in love with me, and watch these behaviors come out of your love." The reason I am afraid is that I really do enjoy all of the things I talked about in the beginning of this post. I enjoy fudge ripples in my ice cream and having guy friends and cuddling with my best friends and being I've-lived-here-21-years familiar with a city. I enjoy having quality kitchenware in which to cook. I like buying bulk medical supplies on sale so I can mommy people at school. I would like to own a MacBook and a really big nice camera that takes 18 megapixel pictures of adorable children. I would like to have an apartment and collect old stoneware dishes and eat organic food and buy a gym membership. I would like to spend $40 on 5 lbs of looseleaf tea online from an underground store in California. I would like to get engaged and not feel bad for spending $1,856 on a ring. I like to go thrift store shopping and get cool looking things that I don't really need but that seem trendy when I set them just right in my room. But I can't. I can't, I can't. Every time I try to go somewhere nice for dinner, every time I eat more than I need, every time I look at how little sugar Po and I have left for our tea and coffee and think of how it's almost time to get more, my heart gets very restless. 
I think somehow we have talked ourselves out of the moral wrongness of misappropriating God's funds. It's his money, isn't it? Don't we pray for him to provide? and Doesn't He? 
I want to apologize for writing this. I want to say, "Maybe it doesn't apply to everyone. Maybe it's okay for some Christians to have yachts and $500,000 houses and eight cars for their five person family. We can justify some of this, right? It's okay for me to look into buying a motorcycle when I already have a car, right? And I could justify owning an iPad, if it would help with my schoolwork. What if someone, just out of the goodness of their heart, gave me a Canon EOS 5D Mark II Camera? How far does this have to go?" 
But He said it. He said it. He said: sell all you have and give to the poor; follow me." The nomadic lifestyle that Jesus was suggesting was directly related to His being a nomad and wanting His disciples with Him, physically following Him. So maybe it's okay to live in a house.
I sound insane. Out of my mind. But something is seriously wrong here, and I can't keep putting off my decision. When it came down to crunch time, Orpah kissed Naomi goodbye, while Ruth clung to her. It's kiss-or-cling time.