Downsizing

Psalm 90:14 – Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love, that we may sing for joy and be glad all our days. (NIV)

After retirement, my husband and I started going to Florida for the winter months. Within a few years, we started to wonder about our home in the north, in comparison to the one we had in the south. The one in the south was a bungalow, all on one floor. The other was a two-storey home with a basement area that opened out onto a ravine lot.

The children were gone and had places of their own, and it was time to think seriously about a move. Our home in the south, being in a retirement community, had the answers — no steps to climb, no grass to cut, no outside painting to do.

We finally found just what we thought would be good; then it came time to downsize. And, yes, we sold our Florida home.

As we thought about all of this, we recalled that we both had had to break up our parents' homes, and had found this a difficult task. We had had to dispose of things we didn't need, things our family didn't want, and things our parents couldn't part with. We had to make the decisions for them — not a pleasant task for any one of us.

Now we had to go through all the possessions that we had accumulated over the years, and, yes, again, downsize. We moved a two-storey four-bedroom house into the neighbour's single car garage, where we stored our possessions until our new home — a two-bedroom bungalow with an unfinished basement that we vowed never to finish — was ready.

Of course, we had appliances to buy, and some furnishings. We kept our dining room suite, a wedding gift that we had refinished, and our oak kitchen table, which my husband had made. We parted with most of our collectables; the rest we packed into cartons, still stored in our basement — never opened.

We have said that this was to be our last move, but, after praying about it, and gaining wisdom from watching those loved ones now gone, we know that we don't have that final choice of our "last move".

As Christians, we may suffer many struggles and losses. We have done for loved ones what we might have thought that they should have done for themselves, but who is it that can prepare us for that last move? In the final analysis, it is God who takes us to Himself, and gathers us to our final resting place.

Prayer: Dear Lord, help us to make wise decisions, as we grow old, when youth has gone, and we don't seem to have the energy we once had. Guide us, O Thou great Jehovah, in the times that lie ahead, so that we might be blessed, and be a blessing to others. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.

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