Letting Go

I’m having a garage sale this weekend.  I’ve never had one before, so this is a first.  My family has spent the last six weeks sorting out closets and storage areas.  We have accumulated piles of “stuff” over the ten years we’ve lived in this house, and truth be told, I have boxes that we moved here with that went untouched, gathering dust in the basement, waiting for a time when I might need their contents again.  I am surprised at how much I held on to. 

The sorting process has been as much an internal task as an external one.  There are parts of me that I tucked away in a little box somewhere, waiting until I needed to go back and find that special thing that is perfect for this moment.  I found pieces of me that I have missed and decided to reclaim, and others that no longer serve and need to be put out once and for all.  I’m scrubbing the inner most closets, those nooks and crannies that are hard to get to, and finding the extra effort worth the trouble.

Part of the process required that there be many moving parts, so there is a lot of clutter and chaos which eventually will settle back to some measure of order.  I don’t operate well in chaos.  At least up to this point.  I feel the tug of wanting to get things to line back up and settle down.  But it is too early for that to happen.  The real letting go is yet to come.  To this point, I have only visualized it, prepared for it, and reconciled myself to it.  What is left is to release it, knowing that it is no longer needed.  I always felt that letting go was hard, but today it feels liberating.