Boxes

One of the highlights I've planned for my summer this year is a week-long “Rifleman's Boot Camp”, an extended marksmanship clinic offered by the RWVA. It's an extended, in-depth version of the RWVA's Appleseed event, as mentioned before (Appleseed - Sacrifice, Appleseed - Alone, Appleseed - Single Part 1, Appleseed - Single Part 2)

The class is held in a relatively remote location. I'm planning on camping on-site to save travel time, gas costs, and my sanity versus spending hours in the car. Both the camping and the shooting will be for a greater duration than I am used to, so I've been steadily “tooling up” for the event for about the last month. So far, it looks like I'm bringing double the equipment for an event that is six times the duration and 50% farther from home than my previous foray. I'm hoping that there's also several times the learning to be had.

It's amazing how much “stuff” I think I need. There's ammo to buy, camping supplies to gather or purchase, car-packing logistics to figure out, and so much more. I think part of it is my “camping” style. Not being proficient due to lack of practice, my methodology is often “open the trunk and shove in a bunch of stuff, hoping that it all works out.” Because of the (mostly self-imposed) demands of this trip, I'm trying to shove in as much stuff as I can to increase the odds of it “working out”.

As I prepare for my week-long trip, I was at my parents' house digging through stuff I left stashed there. Even though it's been a handful of years, I just somehow never get around to packing up all the things I left behind. I knew I had a couple things which would facilitate my trip, but my boxes had long been shuffled into long-term storage. So there I was, on a hot July afternoon, digging through dusty boxes in a cluttered, unventilated outbuilding, looking for something I vaguely remembered I had. Although failing my primary objectives, I did snag some “secondary objective” stuff that will be nice to have at my own house.

I noticed some interesting facts. Teenage Kenton had some good taste in purchases; some of the stuff I brought back has genuine utility for me to this day. Adult Kenton is at least a little impressed that Teenage Kenton made such good choices. Teenage Kenton also kept a lot of just plain junk. For Adult Kenton to be happy with the quantity of his possessions, Adult Kenton will have to sort through many boxes of stuff good only for recycling.

I remembered as I was digging through boxes that I worked hard and spent hours and hard-earned dollars on some of the items that I now consider worthless. Money is just a tool to get where you want to be; the cost didn't bother me. The amount of time I spent was a different matter. It was slightly disconcerting to remember just how many hours I spent either planning a purchase, improvising something I couldn't afford to purchase, or implementing a recent purchase.

The lesson at hand is one I should apply as I try to fill perceived needs for new “stuff” in my life this summer. Remember at the beginning as I talked about all the things I think I need for my summer to go well? How much of it will make me look back in a couple years and say “why did I buy that? That item is completely valueless to me and I don't know why I thought it was so important at the time.” That's a pretty sobering lesson in and of itself, but then God started poking me and it got worse.

What about my spiritual life? What are the things that I ask God for, then beg God for, then whine at God when I don't get? What are the areas in my life where I look at God and say “Gee, my life would be complete if I only had... or if I only knew...”? If God fulfilled my wants, would I look back in a year or two and go “Wow, that really wasn't necessary in my life”? Are “wants” purely for short-term value before being discarded or packed away in a box?

How would one determine which spiritual “needs” have lasting value and which are just spiritual candy that I'll forget about shortly? The theologically-correct answer is that my desires should be filtered through the personality and word of God. Such an answer is a little unhelpful, though, as my Bible doesn't say “spending time with this or that friend is not the best use of your time” or “pathologically refreshing your Facebook isn't a way to make friends and influence people.”

I think almost everyone knows the feeling of hearing theory that seems sound and correct, but not knowing how to adapt it to everyday life. This is one of those rough places for me – filtering God's person and plan into my everyday life.

Wait, let's keep digging just a little farther down! I've been doing a lot of thinking after the end of my most recent dating relationship. Although I'm thankful that healing after ended relationships has not become a routine part of my life, I still would sometimes rather not figure it out from scratch every time.

In my heart, there's a pile of boxes labeled “memories of Mary.” Since our relationship lasted for more than a short time, it's more like a pile than it is like one box. Most of the time, I think everything in every one of those boxes is important. I put time and emotional energy into each and every moment. After the breakup, all the memories got packed up and shoved into a corner because I needed them out of my way and off my floor, so to speak.

I wonder how those boxes will age. Will the memories become fonder as they age, like wine, meat, or cheese? Or, like the leftovers that get forgotten in my fridge, will they just get fuzzy, turn colors, and smell bad? Which are the memories worth keeping, and which are hanging around waiting to be dismissed? I'd like the room back that they are taking up. I guess just like teenage Kenton's boxes of electronics, time will give perspective and I have to rent floor space for a while longer.